IMMIGRATION.

Southland Times, Issue 696, 15 July 1867, Page 3

IMMIGRATION.

(From the '■' Argus,". 27th June.) V We have been .exporting large quan-r titles of wheat to England ; some of our squatters are making preparations to boil r down their sheep for tallow, in the absence of a market for -the meat thread is selling at from fivepence to sixpence the four-pound loaf, beef and mutton" from .threepence to sixpence .per pound ; potatoes at three pounds per ton, and excellent "wine of colonial growth at froniifour to five shillings per gallon ; local productioh, in all that concerns a supply, of the necessaries of life, is considerably in excess , ;of local consumption ; and the progress of the colony is literally arrestod by; the want 'of immigration. These facts cannot be repeated too often, nor impressed too ' strongly upon the minds of our ; "countrymen ""at home." That there should be at one end of the world a British community so thickly peopled as that population is, incessantly encroaching: up^bn the means . of subsistence; that a million of paupers are maintained at the public coat ; that deaths from cold and hunger are numerous 'and frequent ; that children of tender years are driven to labor in the fields in gangs, and are brutalised or destroyed 'by the progress ; and that, in every walk, of life, competition is so intense that the applicant for employment is a suppliant and hot a negotiator ; ; and that, . simultaneously with this state of things in the mother country, there should be one of her dependencies in the South Pacific as large as England and Wales, as fertile as Sicily and as healthy as [Nice, craving for the superfluous capital and labor of the parent state, but craving 1 , in vain, does appear to be a perfectly inexplicable anomaly. We count our population by hundreds of thousands only, while the country is' capable of maintaining millions, with a wide field for the enterprise of the restless and the adventurous in the neighboring colonies and in the innumerable islands of the great Pacific. What a mere handful of people has accomplished in Victoria, chiefly since the year 1851, may be accepted as an earnest of what may be effected by still lai'ger numbers, actuated by the same spirit of industry and energy in the time to come. We have built and conferred municipal institutions upon upwards of sixty towns and! cities, containing 70,000 habitable dwellings, more than 300,000 souls,. and rateable property of the estimated value of -£20,000,000 sterling. Outside of -their limits are the rural shires and road districts, to the number of a hundred, with 54,000 houses, 253,000 inhabitants, and rateable property . exceeding £16,000,000 in value. For the spiritual wants of the people, 1,700 churches and chaples have been [erected ; and for the education of the young, upwards of 700 common schools have been opened, upon the rolls of which the names of 70,000 children are inscribed. Some of the most important towns of the colony are brought into direct communication with the seaboard by 271 miles of railway, and 3,000 miles of telegraphic wire, and 525 post-offices, furnish the colonist with every requisite facility for the transmission of his correspondence. Pastoral and agricultural pursuits provide employment for 55,000 men and women, mining for 80,000 men, and 900 mills and manufactories afford occupation to nearly 10,000 persons ; exclusive of several thousands who are engaged in various handicrafts in Melbourne and other large towns. , The_ immigrant, therefore, finds the. same social conditions and the same diversified outlet for his skill, capital, and industry to which he has been, accustomed in the mother country.; He loses few of the benefits bestowed upon it by its venerablecivilization^ and he- gains largely by the superior material advantages, which . a colony "offers "to the man who has the courage to seize them and .the steadiness" of [purpose necessary to 4urn- them to their best account. If he had a career to make, nowhere are the obstacles to success so few in number and so easily surmountable, nowhere are the opportunities for self-advancement so numerous and so invitingj as in a new country, with a large area of uncultivated teritory, and with resources , of which all that is known encourages the : belief that those which yetawait development will-exceed in variety: and value the most sanguine expectations of the enthusiast. To capitalists, to fund-holders and annuitants, to farmers possessing either a moderate .amount of money or a family of grownup sons, to sober and industrious artisans and laborers, with a general aptitude for anything, and a pliant adaptability to the circumstances and requirements of a new country, Australia offers inducements for settlement and assurances of reward such as are presented, we will, venture to say, by ,no other possessions of the British Crcjwn, We, have shown, what has been don[e within half the life-time of a single generation j and this will be repeated on a grander scale, and with proportionately .enlarged J^y4tg, during $§n£sfc ©i^^ti or

annually send us forty or. fifty, thousand men and women to eat our -super-abun-;dant supplies of food, to assist in the cultivation of our waste lands, to multiply the number of our industries, and to continue and extend the work which has been so prosperously commenced. Need we remind our fellow-countrymen in England that it is not .these colonies alone which are benefited by emigration. The parent states reaps from it advantages not lessv substantial:;: ;than. those which it ;confers upon the dependency which receives the efflux of population. There the emigrant: has been a competitor in the labor market, has divided with another mail Toaf^w'hich was scarcely adequate for the support of either, and has been occasionally an univilling burden on the; community or on his brother operatives ; but, here he becomes one of their best customers, he assists to augment the supply of the raw materials which form the staple of various British manufacturers, and' his improved circumstances enable him to purchase commodites which were beyond his reach at home. Thus every man, woman, and child in Victoria annually consumes manufactured articles the produce of the United Kingdom, of the value of about Ll2 sterling; while our imports from, other Brittish possessions are equivalent in value to L 6 per head of our population. And since there are branches of manufacturing industry which can only be successfully prosecuted in 'countries possessing cheap capital, cheap labor, great mineral wealth, and matchless means of intercommunication, like England, it follows that our supplies of certain articles of general consumption will continue to be drawn from thence for many years to come, and that therefore the growth of our numbers by ioiigration implies the extension of one of thejlargest and. the best markets ±o which the . parent state directs her commerce. JSTor will English statesmen require to be informed that the Australian immigrant retains ; his loyalty to the Throne, his., attachment to the national flag, and his pride in the power and grandeur of the empire, "by the long wash of Australasian seas." He neither relinquishes his nationality nor helps to build up the greatness and wealth of a rival, and possibly a hostile nation, like the emigrant to the United States. He remains true to the parent stock and to the characteristics of the old race. He merely discards some of his insular per^ judices, and gradually disencumbers his mind of the feelings of intolerance inculcated in, or inherited by it ; and concurrently with the widest political and religious freedom, he finds himself in the enjoyment of material comforts, and of an amount of solid prosperity, unattainable at home, and neither sufficiently prized nor frankly acknowledged, in the colonies.

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