SEND THE POOR TO THE COLONIES.

Southland Times, Issue 1144, 19 April 1869, Page 3

SEND THE POOR TO THE COLONIES.

'♦ (From the 'Times.') Dirt, we are frequently told, is only a good thing in a wrong place. The same tnay be said of nearly all our pauperism. It is a bad thing in our purely agricultural countries, where the poor laborers, with their low wages and large families, have neither the money, nor the strength , nor the spirit, nor the knowledge to go where, they are more wanted, and where their labor will fetch two or three times M much as it does now. Pauperism is a baa thing in this metropolis, where shipbuilding, docks, and twenty other undertakings all stop at once, and the workpeople are left stranded far away from their old connexions, and nobody wanting them here. All over this country most of the pauperism is only a good thing in a wrong place. If anybody will give his attention to it, he will find that moat bf the persons, old or young, male br female; subsisting on weekly jittknctes out of door's, or on a dietary within, have plenty of work in them, and the will to work too, but they are not wanted enough to get a maintenance by their work, even with good intentions. It is needless to specify cases, for they might be multiplied to any extent. A rise in the market value ftf home labor to half as much again would take tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands from the Poor Law lists. Many a laborer's widow with several small children says, if she had but a room, she could maintain herself and her children by needle - work, field - work, charing, or Borne such resource, but a shilling, perhaps only ten-pence, a day— and that not every day — won't pay rent and everything else. It is a libel on the British people, or any portion of it, to say that it does not like work ; though work is a habit which one may fall out of, and bo require getting into harness again. Sad fare and other miseries may bring down the strongest frame, and the Stoutest heart too, and a man then ceases to be able to help himself, for what brains he has. will suffer with the rest of his system. That he should be hungry himself, and that his wife and children should be crying for bread, and nothing to give them, is a bad thing, or a good thing, just according to circumstances. In some. places, happily in most places on this earth, it drives a man to work and do his duty. But there are places and times where.it only drives a man to despair, to pauperism, to recklessness, and to crime. A healthy appetite is a very good thing when there are the means and the opportunities for satisfying it, not when the appetite has nothing but itself to feed on. But it is a lamentable fact, which we cannot shut our eyes to, that one of the most common results of continued distress is an increasing want of resource, and even dread of enterprise. Many a laboring family rots where it is rather than try its fortune elsewhere. Here, then, is the' occasion for one of those services which wealth, education, intelligence, and spirit can render to the working poor. Good people can set them on their legs, open their eyes, quicken their hearing, tell them where they are wanted, and how they are to get there. At this moment there is idle labor in this metropolis enough to found and maintain a considerable colony, if it could be only transplanted to the right spot. Such is the very valuable and timely moral of the letter from Melbourne in our yesterday's columns. The Melbourne race course on the Cup Day our correspondent describes as the annual gathering and the microcosm of Australian society, from the almost tropical Queensland to the Ultima Thule of New Zealand. Prom his account of the scene it is a good imitation of our own Derby Day. What he had in his mind, however, was to trace Old England in the vast multitude, seated on the hillside commanding the race course. Perhaps, for the sake of a good home sensation, he would have liked to see an unmistakeable laborer from our Southern or Western counties, with his bent form and spare frame, and the marks of premature old age in his wan cheeks. Perhaps he would have liked to see an artisan, he could imagine straight from Beth-, nal green. But nothing of the sort was to be seen. The tens of thousands covering the hill must, most of them, have come from the Old Country, and must, most of them, remember the constant privations and quent straits of a working man's ,ife, whether in town or in country. Most of. them must remember the sort of food, the aortjp^^nafe,. tKelcilflthing, the l ajlpw-^ ance ftf fuel, and other comforts to . which a larg&Ja^ilj* .mmi hei reduced , on ./the; ordinary wages of an English laborer < inthe by no means worst districts. Yet

I there they were — stout, healthy, robust i and even high colored, looking not so \ much laborers as small farmers, which, ; most; of them had, indeed, grown into. An agricultural laborer there rapidly ! developes into a farmer, an artisan into a i master, arid a carpenter or a bricklayer into a contractor. In fact, it rests entirely with a nian hiitiseif \Yhrtt he will be. The regular wages are so good, the ! allowances so considerable, and the . opportunities of employment for women and children- so' numerous, that a man can easily lay by half his earnings, and save money for ' some small business of his own. That, of course* constitutes one of the great difficulties of Australian life, for good servants are there, "Very scarce* and able to command their own terms. In fact, as the expression is, there are there two masters after one man, instead of two men after one master. All this was apparent to the eye on the racecourse of Melbourne. It is not a state of things to everybody's taste. For a raau with money, rank, or position there is no place like England 5 no place where he can get so much for his money* such service, such personal attendance, such abundance of skilled rind Unskilled labor, such means of doing everything he wants i to do; and of getting everything he wants to get. This is the very Paradise of a rich man, of a peer, or of a dignitary. But it is not the Paradise of a poor man. At least, if it be admitted that the state of things at home is a good school for the teaching of some "social and political virtues, it cannot be denied that labor and poverty are subjected to an excessive competition. The general condition and the general opportunities of the working poor, especially in the rural districts, have not risen in proportion to the general increase of wealth. There is a sentimental school which preaches to the laborer that he had best stay at home, and that with tfu'ch blessings as a parish church, parish clergyman, and, perhaps, also a squire, he had better be content with bread, cabbage, and an occasional mouthful of bacon, instead of perilling hia manners and his faith in a bustling colony. Experience, however, so as it has time and some scope for a reasonable induction, does not show the decided superiority of home life to colonial. It rather establishes that something like competence, and even independence, are as wholesome for a working man as we all of us know them to be for his betters. Here, then, is an opening for any i people who want to do a good work of a special and also of an enduring character. At present we are feeding hundreds of thousands of people for doing nothing at all, and there cannot be the least doubt that commercially London pauperism is a better speculation than agricultural labor. The cost of a pauper is enormous, and it is not too much to say that every iadustrious working man in England carries a pauper on his back. But the process is interminable and always becoming worse. Every week thousands of ratepayers are changed into rate devourers, and taken from the strength of the country to be added to its burden. The evil is greatly aggravated by the precarious and temporary character of much employment in this country. It always is so in a rich and luxurious condition of society. Building, gardening, trenching, brickmaking, road-making, and many other occupations depend much on the season and the weather, and still more on the fluctuations of prosperity and credit. At one time many great public and private works are pressing for completion, at another time there is nothing to be done, and the discharged laborers have no regular employment to fall back upon. There is obvious convenience in the possession of a vast industrial army, ready for any work and chargeable on the public when its work is no longer wanted. We owe the greatest monuments of ancient Borne to her multitude of captives and slaves. But the interest of the population itself is here somewhat at variance with the interest of the State in its less popular sense. For the people themselves it is better tbat many of them should be transplanted to some regions where they can work more for themselves, and depend for employment more on the regular course of nature, than on the caprices of wealth or the vicissitudes of trade. ;