IMMIGRATION OR NO IMMIGRATION?

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1033, 12 August 1879, Page 2

IMMIGRATION OR NO IMMIGRATION?

[by telegraph. ] Wellington, August 11. A deputation waited 011 the Premier to-day to urge the views of the mass meeting on Saturday night against free immigration. Mr. Crook, who acted as spokesman, urged in graphic and forcible language the evils of crowding the country with immigrants whilst the laborers who were already in New Zealand could not obtain employment. He also pointed out the absolute necessity of settling the people on the lands of the Colony. Sir George Grey, in reply, stated that the Government'had already sent orders Home to stop the free immigration of males. He said that this would have been done long since, but that the Government had been deputationised to death by parties acting in the interests of the landocrary, who were desirous of securing cheap labor. The Government had no communication from the working men on the subject, and were practically acting in the dark. If the industrial classes were desirous of seeing their views embodied on the Statute Book of New Zealand they mast send their own class to represent them in Parliament. The policy of the Government which has been published dealt with the evils of the land system. He would make no promises, because he had been accused by his enemies of breaking so many. He cared not by whom his policy was-carried out. His motto was " measures not men and if they desired, to see those measures of the Liberal programme carried into effect, they would at

the coming elections return men -whom from their past history they could trust to support those measures.