NEW ZEALAND AS AN ENGLISH COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S EMIGRATION FIELD.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 104, 1 May 1880, Page 1

NEW ZEALAND AS AN ENGLISH COUNTRY GENTLEMAN'S EMIGRATION FIELD.

Under the above heading the following letter appears in the Field of February 7 : — While on a visit to New Zealand last year I was strongly impressed with the advantages which it held „ out to that Bection of the British public not usually thought of by Colonial agents-general. I refer to those who derive their incomes from investments in English consols, A large number of these are condemned to a sort of genteel poverty by the low dividend of 3 per cent per annum. I doubt whether the pressure of the times affects any class much more disastrously. They have a position to maintain which makes it impossible for them to send their sons and daughters to the counter or bench', and every avenue to the more genteel occupations is perhaps closed. Hence a growing anxiety which makes life almost unbearable. I will show what a gentleman thaß situated could do in New Zealand. Assuming him to have, say; £10,000 invested in the 3 per cent consols, his income would be £300 a year. Given half-a-dozen growing boys and girls, and it will be at once seen that there is a state of present genteel poverty and future bother and anxiety. Now, let me take hin to New Zealand, and see what he may do there with his £10,000 and his troop of boys and girls. Eight thousand pounds he might let out on mortgage — the security being practically as good as the English consols— at 8. per cent per anuum. This would give him £640 a year, instead of £300 for the £10,000. With the £2000 remaining he could buy twenty or thirty acres of land, and build a comfortable house thereon. A gentleman^ of my acquaintance, whom I visited in New Zealand, has just bought eighty-five acres of really excellent land within a couple of hour's ride of Nelson, en which he propo-Bed building a comfortable home for his family. The price given for the land was £3 15s per acre. The house, with all necessary out-buildings, would cost him about £600. A thousand pounds will put the -whole thing straight, plant the orchard, lay out the gardens, and fence the paddocks. Here, then, I take it, is both a present and future infinitely preferable to the characterless monotony and dismal outlook of the old life. Half the income might be devoted to I the enlargement of the estate, until by the time the youngsters became men and women, a good slice might be availailable for each, on which they might proceed to work out their own lifeproblems. I say nothing about the delicous climate for which he would exchange the sadly trying fogs and winds of England. A man must go and luxuriate in the glorious sunshine of the Antipodes to understand what that means. I have a thousand times felt while riding over the fern-ciad hills or by the side of some mountain rill along the valleys, wheo the warmth of the summer's sun was tempered by a cooling breeze from sea or hill, how poor all the so-called luxuries of home-life • were by comparison with this transporting delight. I venture to think, therefore, that many a perplexed, English country gentleman would do well to turn bis attention to the sunny South. Those half a dozen lads and losßies whose future now so Borely perplexes him, would probably find their destiny in making and adorning New Zealand homes such as I have now given the outlines of. The girls would probably make more by a removal from this over stocked Old England than the boysj end there is nothing that New Zealand would more gladly import than a few thousand of our glorious, bright-eyed, high-principled, and well-bred English country lasses.