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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 140, 15 June 1871, Page 2

To The Editor or the Nelson Evening Mail. Sir, — I see by your valuable paper which I get occasionally that there has been a good deal of talk in the Provincial Council aod the General Assembly about getting immigrants into the Colony as a means of future prosperity; I quite agree with the system of immigration, but I should prefer to see the whole of the population we have permanently settled before we go to the expense of bringing others out from home. I allude more particularly to the miners, although I well know the fixed idea of the Government is that the miners are, a roving, unsettled class of people, and consequently that they haye not tbe remotest idea of making any provision for them as far as concerns the settlement of the waste lands of the colony. Now, sir, I think there are at leasi oue-third of the miners "who would be willing to settle down, if the Government were to offer to help them in the way of land, say, let them -have one hundred acres, -where they like to select it, for ahaut £25 or £30, prpvided they entered into i security to settle on it for at lekst five years, and that

they be either married men or men about to be married; as the Government are &oing to make railroads, &c, into the interior, this would be helping to open up the back country, nnd be providing traffic for the railways. We can alwoys get a little gold, and if we could make ourselves a home on something like what I have above alluded to, I think there are a great many who would be glad to do bo, and there is a great deal of poor ground that would then be worked that otherwise never would be touched, but with a bit of land, and the little gold that wouldbe got, I think in time it would help to put a little life into "Sleepy Hollow." I am, &c, Miner. Motueka River, June 3, 1871.