UNDESIRABLE IMIGRANTS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XV, Issue 246, 8 December 1880, Page 4

UNDESIRABLE IMIGRANTS.

In his lecture delivered in Melbourne on . " Keminiscenses of an ci- Agent General," Sir A. Michie told the following Btory :— A young man in the middle rank of life, together wiuh his: wiie and six children— all under eight years of age, the youngest an infant in arms — were all recently shipped ito this colony by their friends, "who haet furnished this emigrant family with a sum of about £36 or £3 7to start' with bri reaching this, to them, strange country. - Thetyoung man had. no profession or calling of any kind ; was in. an advanced stage of consumption, and utterly unfit for any employment by which he might hope to support his family. His wife was a lady } and had received an education corresponding with , her social position at home, and had been led to believe that by teaching music, and such other accomplishments as constitute the staple of female education in England, she could j at any rate, secure her children from want. Her father, a highly respectable professional man in London, had too such sanguine anticipations, and discouraged his daughter and son»in«law from leaving home and home friends on such a questionable venture. The husband's friends, however, either had no such misgivings, or, if they had, they did not allow them to stand in the way of the shipment of this poor family. And now would come the cream of the jest, if jest we could in so heart-rending a case. A very near;male "relative of the' young man, conscious of his diseased state, fforr r warded to a gentleman here the small sum I have mentioned, accompanied by a letter, in which, among other things, he said that in any Case, in a country like this so in want of population, the young wife and her six children would be a considerable gain to us j the more especially, he said) as the wife, at her age was likely to haveari annual addition to hep family for years to come; I had some difficulty in believing that he could consciously descend to the jocular in connexion with such a human consignment. It is almost needless Jo say, that the little family were not here' many weeks before they were, in absolute want : and that had it not been for the timely 6id of^a, ibenevolerit Church of England clergyman, and an r equally benevolent banker of this city, in conjunction with some otherß who took an interest in the case, this family must i have starved or been thrown on. our I already too much?, abused public chari ! ties. Eventually, they were assisted ; to return to the mother country* .= per- ; haps to astonish some of iheir friends by this admission against ourselves, i that such a boon as six children under j eight) years" of age//n esse, arid" perhaps a dozen more in posse, could be any : other than a gain to a young- 5 country | like ours £jg in need of population.''* :