IMMIGRATION.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 49, 30 December 1871, Page 12

IMMIGRATION.

[lndependent.]

The question of immigration is every day becoming more and more important to New Zealand. It is accepted by all who have thought over the public works policy of the Government that unless the importation of suitable immigrants goes on hand-in-hand with the construction of railways or other works the policy will stand imminent risk of shipwreck, and that the present colonists will have to bear the brunt of a burden of taxation under which they would find existence in New Zealand almost intolerable. The Ministry themselves must know how very serious this question is, and how imperatively necessary it is that it should be grappled with vigorously. And we do not doubt that they have urged upon the AgentGeneral the importance of pushing on emigration from England and the Continent to New Zealand as rapidly as possible; but there is a silence on this subject which does not augur very well for the success of Dr. Featerstoii's success in this direction. We accept as a fact the opinions we see expressed in home papers, and in our own private correspondence, that there is no very special desire just now amongst those classes in England from which we hope to derive additional settlers to emigrate hither. Strange as it may appear it is nevertheless true that in spite of the great increase of production in manufactures ; and in spite of the increase of pauperism, the rate of wages in England at the present time is nearly ten per cent higher than it was twelve months ago. The agents of all the Australian colonies find the same difficulty in obtaining suitable immigrants, and apparentlyDr Featherston has not been more successful. The long voyage, the distance from home, the want of such adequate information as would recommend itself to the intending immigrant, are all causes which will always place New Zealand at a disadvantage as compared with Canada or the United States. So extensive has been the migration of people from Ireland, from Western Scotland, and the manufacturing districts of England to America that there is an enormous number of friends or relations left behind who, if they leave the old country at all, prefer to go where they will not be utterly strange and unknown. From England to America is a voyage of only a few days, and the cost trifling. To New Zealand it is a voyage of months, and the cost is proportionate. The odds to an English emigrant are so decidedly in favor of America that very strong inducements indeed must be offered if it is expected that any large stream of British emigration can be directed to these shores. Of course, the distance cannot be lessened, and that and the discomforts a long voyage will (always operate unfavorably against this colony, but the Government can do much which would go a long way towards compensating for the disadvantages of time and distance. They have

already, we understand, authorised the Agent-General to give passages to desirable immigrants on terms as favorable as they can obtain elsewhere, but we fail to'see that any thoroughly thoughtout plan of settling them upon the soil when they arrive has been adopted. No doubt the colony could at once absorb a large numbarof able bodied male adults, who could be employed on the railways and other public works, but still something definite ought to be done with regard to enabling them to settle their families, if they come. New Zealand could always depend upon getting a moderate supply of the better class of immigrants from Britain —the small capitalists—if the land laws of the colony were made sufficiently elastic and * liberal ; but until that is done, we shall have to depend mainly upon other countries for our labor and immigration. The Agent-General has been compelled to seek in Scandinavia and North Prussia the population he expected to obtain in Great Britain, and has, we believe, made arrangements for some four or five thousand immigrants from these countries to come out during a series of years. It may not matter very much whence our immigrants are derived, so long as they make good colonists ; but even for foreigners we must ba able to make adequate provision when they come. The time is rapidly arriving when the administration of the waste lands of the colony must be placed in the hands of the Central Government, as it is in the United States. The completion of any large colonial policy is impossible until this is done, and the whole landed estate treated as colonial property. Without this an immigration policy cannot be successfully carried out. The variety of our land laws, the conflicting operations of the various Provincial Governments, and the absence of special inducements to settlers, are all causes that will, unless removed or modified, interfere greatly with one of the most important features of the Government policy.