EMIGRATION TO NEW ZEALAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 69, 10 March 1876, Page 2

EMIGRATION TO NEW ZEALAND.

(.Aberdeen Daily Press ) In another column we publish a set of resolutions passed at a meeting of tho •• unemployed" in Dunedin, and in doinaf so it may be advisable to explain that the copy resolutions sent us oame to hand a oouple of weeks ago. Tbey have since appeared io some of the southern papera, and been the occasion of comment more or less. The ouse' of our retainiutr them in hand till now was the fact tbat we had some slight suspicions about their origin, and these suspicions were raiher confirmed than otherwise by the circumstance that tbe Dunedin papers seemed io ignore the meeting of so-called unemployed people. An extract speech by Major Atkinson, Immigration Minister, delivered in the New Zealand Parliament a few days after, and which we now append to the resolutions of the unemployed, may be left to speak fpr itself. Perhaps the best answer to the resolutions is tbe simple fact that during the last three years 42,300 free passages had been arranged for ty settlers who wished to bring out their own relatives. Jt surely speaks volumes for the country wben those who know boih Bides of the question wish their friends to come aod join tbem ; and it is a complete refutation of the resolutions, and ot the letter from tbe Mr Grant, who figures in connection therewith, wbich appeared last year iu a contemporary. To us, it appears incredible that respectable colonists in New Zealand should a*k their friends to break up their homes and cast in their lot with them unless they were fully persuaded tbat those same friends I would better their circumstances by so doing. Dunedin, we believe has long been favored with a celebrated character in the Mr Grant just mentioned, who believes be has a Bpecial mission to redress the wrongs of the oppressed. This sample of the stump orator —who hails from Tomintoul —has for about sixteen years been tbe only living exponent of the unemployed io Dunedin; 90,000 persons have landed at Otago during tbat time, and yet Grant's unemployed don't appear to have become more numerous even by the smallest additioo. The Octagon —an opeu space in Princes -street —is generally the place of bis public meetings. There he is accustomed to address tradesmen going to or returning from dinner; end it is rather amusiog, we understand, to contrast tbe pompous Btyle of the orator with the diraunitive form from which the oratory emanates. The workmen are always sure oi a good hearty laugh at the expense of the orator, or at something he has Baid; and in either case Mr Grant it equally gratified. He is a man of no influence or ability, and he is singularly destitute of common sense. Had his friends taught him some useful handicraft trade, he might have been a serviceable man, and able to earn his bread in an honorable way. But instead, he was sent to Marischal College, Aberdeen, and ihe result has been the production of a semi-learned and useless mountebank. His life is, without exception, we are assured, the saddest picture in New Zealand of misused education aud misspent effort. In oo other town in New Zealand could he exhibit as he has been allowed to in Dunedin, aud it is simply to be acccounted for from the fact that the elementß of fun and frolic are so strongly developed io a number of unthinking peoplo tbere, tbat tbey prefer one of Grant's meetings to the beat available comedy. And it certainly has this advantage over the other, that the farce is always real, so far as the chief actor is ooncerued.