THE COST OF EMIGRATION.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 681, 23 October 1852, Page 4

THE COST OF EMIGRATION.

[From fie " Times."] The extraordinary degree to which in the English mind the development of the practical element outruns the progress of speculation, is nowhere more strikingly illustrated than in the theory and practice of emigration. The greatest colonizing power ilmt the world has ever seen, — which has poured forth from its teeming bosom nation after nation to spread abroad its arts, its lnnsrua^e, and its institutions, — which enumoatos amongst its descendants communities in the vigour of youth like the Australian colonies, in. the promises of manhood like Canada and the United States, and we fear in the decline of age like too many of our West Indian possessions, — has never found time in the mighty and almost incessant labour of three centuries to investigate the principles or determine the relations of emigration to the co-ordinate elements of the sociaj scheme. Almost the only notion which Government has ever had on removing- population from one part of this earth to another has been as a part of punishment —not as an example to dilute the innocent, but as a terror to deter the guilty. The next step was the discovery that, by selling the waste Jands of the colonies, and devoting their proceeds to emigration, instead of to the support of thpir internal government, a fund might be laised to supply those deficiencies which the annual exportation of crime had left unfilled ; and at this point the theory and practice of emigration have come *o a dead spot for the last twenty years. Criminals transported to expiate their crimes, and peisons selected for deportation at the expense of the Colonial Land Fund, are all that our public and authorised systems have yet been able to besiow upon the colonies. To hear people talk at this moment, one would suppose that there was some magical and inviolable connection between money raised by the spiling and letting of land in the colonies and the exportation of emigiants, and that by no other fund, and in no other mannei, could a portion of the population be removed. Let the colonies suffer what inconvenience, what injury, what ruin they may for the want of labour, the amount of relief which under the present system they are destined to experience is exactly limited to the fund they can raise by the selling or letting of waste lands ; and if the want of labour, by enhancing wages and deploying profits, renders the land unsaleable or unletable, and thus destroys the revenue, so much the worse for the colony. Government has no f'uither funds at its disposal available for the purposes of emigration, and so the colony must meet its fate as it miiy. Now, surely this is a very small part, a very inconsiderable fraction, of the great national question of emigration. It is not merely the colonial capitalists that is iclievcd by the introduction of labour. The English labourer, who suffers by overcompetition, is relieved by the removal of Ins competitor. The ratepayer is relieved by the removal of the claimant for relief ; the Government is relieved by the removal of ita needy, and therefore dangerous, subjects. My what extraordinary blindness is it that all these parties have unanimously agreed to limit the relief which they are to receive to so much only ns can be procured by the amount which the weakest and poorest among them, the dißtant and struggling colony, is able to contribute It is clearly because we have mistaken the part for the whole, and lowered to the standard of colonial lehef a question of impenal dimension^. Take for instance the present movement under the patronage of Prince Albert for the removal of the supeilluous inhabitants of the Island of tikye. In ordei to pioduco the rel iff required, many thousands of peisons must be removed. Such a removal will not only benefit the colony to which they are to bo sent; it will restoie value to the land gioaning under the starving ma«si's which it has bioughl forth hut cannot nouush, relieve

the ratepayer, and redeem the nntion fiom the inpxplicable reproach of suflei uv>; thousand* to peiish of hunger in the midst of plenty and supeifluiry. lleie, then, are four panics to the benefit, the landowner, the ratepayer, the nation, .mil the colony ; and in what propot nons do they coudibutc 1 The nation, which can lavish its millions in the attempt to ameliorate the condition of the distant African, or to penetrate the icy baiuer of the jNorth, sees its children peiish and malves no sign. 'I he i.itepayei contnbutes nothing, tlie l.inilloid a trifle. The whole weight of exoneinting the estates of Sliye tolls on the colony, whose ic-bources ai&to feed and transport them to it. shores. Tv\othnds of the outfit necessary fot the voyage, arid of the deposit lequirpd from each emigrtnt, are supplied by subscription, and one-thud liy the landowner of the island. Thus, if wo ta ire </24 as the cost of conveying an emigrant fiom SKye to Victoria, £t are contiibuted bv the peisons piincipally uite-esfed, the landowners; £l by the chauUble, who, e\wpt through their feelings aie not interested at all ; and £18 by the colony. Not only is this so, but it never seems to have orcurred to anybody that the aff.nr could bo trwisacfe'l on any other pnnciple, or that those who aie piofitling so very laigely by colonial expenditure might fan ly be called upon to contubtitc more largely themselves. It has nevei oceuned to auv one tlr.t these amounts could he more equally proportioned, and th<> reason is plain enough. The landloid is iheie to look alter Ins ovmi inteiest, the charitable subscribers can annex what terms they please to their subscriptions ; but, while everybody stipulates for himself, there are none to make teims h-r the colony. We do not mean to dispainge this benevolent scheme, hut meiely adduce it as an instance of the manner m which the wublic mind has become wavpi-il on this subject, till it cannot even entertain the idea of sending out an emigrant except at the expense of the Colonial Land Fund. 'Him arbitrary and unjust association of ideas produces tiiis among other evils, that, having once nai rowed tho notion of emigration down to so much as can be ptocured by colonial funds, we are for ever applying inadequate remedies at a large expense to evils ioi which emigrat on would be a certain and cheap cure. Above all, what spectacle c.m beat once moie ludicious and melancholy than the relief doled out year by year to able-bodied paupers, who, at the expense of some two years' support, might not only be placed in coinfoi table and even affluent encumstances, but repay to the parish thp expense of sending them out? There are at this moment upwards of n. hundred and thirty thousand able bodied paupers in the workhouses ot England and Wales. Taking their maintenance at eight pounds a head, these persons cost annually one million and forty thousand pounds. Supposing at the present high rate of passage it cost twenty-four pounds a-head to send them to Australia, the total expense of the operation would be three million one hundred and twelve thousand pounds. If this sum were raised by way of loan on the Pooi Rates the interest at thiee per cent, would be a little more than ninety three thousand pounds. Every emigrant might be bound to discbarge his passage money as soon has he was able, — an obligation in which many would fail, but which many also perform. It is difficult to estimate the amount which would thus be leturned ; but even weie not a single shilling repaid, the difference between ninety three thousand and one million and forty thousand leaves a good margin for a sinking fund. The sime calculation might be extended to the poorhousos in Ireland ; and it is no exaggeration to say that thousands of those who died of fever and starvation in Kdrush or Ennistymon might, at an expenditure less than that which is lequired for a second-rate railway, have been placed in a position of competence, or oven of wealth. Theieave not many financial operations the results of which aio at once so certain and so brilliant. Wo rejoice to see that a step in the n^ht direction has been taken by tho authorities of the parish of St. M.irtm, and we heartily congratulate them on having been the first to set an example which must, we should think, be contagious. But charity is a fashion, and politics are a loutine ; and, while the one squanders her resources ia schemes of chimerical relief, and the other in useless establishments, our people are sufFered to perish, our colonies to be destroyed, and our manufactures to be crippled, for the sake of a sum scaicely greater than that expended in dinners to the honour of well* fed benevolence and ostentatious philanthiophy.