HERZEGOVIANS FOR NEW NEW ZEALAND.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XI, Issue 188, 1 August 1876, Page 4

HERZEGOVIANS FOR NEW NEW ZEALAND.

i Some people at home are disposed to be very generous to New Zealand, and j propose that we should spand a million in bringing these troublesome people here. The Illustrated London Neius of May 27, in an article on the war in Herzegovina, says: — "Meantime the brave though barbarous mountaineers ie tbe highlands of the Adriatic shore $re 'deferring of English sympathy, if i

not as combatants, yet as martyrs of ' ; the causa of freedom. Their destitute families, driven into the neighboring . towns of Dalmatia, are still in great need of relief. Mr Edward Alfred Freeman of Somerleaze, Wells, the author of the best work of English History ever yet written, has taken up this generous cause, and asks contributions of money. We would suggest, however, that the kindest, the most effectual, and the easiest measure of , relief is to take the whole population— about equal to one London parish—and ship them off to New Zealand. Two or three firms of London shipowners, such as Shaw, Saville, and Co., would readily contract to perform this service in the ensuing summar. The Colonial Government would grant a million starling (which is a trifle to Sir Julius Yogel) lor the cost of their reception and settlement, and they might have a few thousand square miles of virgin land for nothing in the provinces of Auckland and Taranaki, where the Turks would never give them any more trouble. It is scarcely likely that the * Great Powers ' not henceforth including Great Britain, will adopt this practical solution of the great problem. But, if we are hereafter obliged to pay for another Crimean war, in consequence of its diplomatic non-solution, we shall perhaps be reminded that one week's expenditure in that sort of thing far exceeds the cost of procuring the emigration, and ensuring the permanent welfare of the whole Herzegovinian people. They would, moreover, as a hardy and laborious race of peasantry, bring to New Zealand a great accession of prosperity. They would increase both the productiveness of Colonial industry, and its demand for our manufactures, already greater for the numbers of its population than in any other country of the world. But these are aordid, economical considerations, beneath the regard of diplomatic interventionists or non - interventionists assembled to concoct an ultimatum for the admonition of the Sublime Porte."