The Tekuma Leader TUESDAY, MAY 26, 1891. THE CENSUS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2206, 26 May 1891, Page 2

The Tekuma Leader TUESDAY, MAY 26, 1891. THE CENSUS.

It will be remembered that in his last financial statement Sir Harry Atkinson made very little of the number of people who had left the coleny. Only three or four thousand people had gone away altogether, chiefly women and children, and eighteen children went away with every woman. We commented on this at the time, and pointed out how erroneous it was, but we really did not think matters were so bad as they were at the time. The results of the census just taken show exactly how many left the colony, but it does not show how much money they took away with them. When the census was taken in 1886 it was found that the population of this colony was then 578,482; now it is 623,352, being an increase of 44,870. This would appear satisfactory enough, but when we come to find there were 64,168 persons born more than died during the time we can see that a great; many people left the colony. The natural increase is the excess of births over deaths, and this we find to be 64,168, but the actual increase is only 44,870, therefore there is the difference between the natural and the actual increase miesing. The difference is £19,293, and thst is the number of people who have left the colony during the last few years. This is the actual position as disclosed by the latest enumeration of the census papers. In our last issue the total of our population was represented as 618,888, but later information has set it down at 623,852, and that number, we are assured is now absolutoly correct. The census returns present one curious feature. They show that the number of people who arrived in the colony was 73,386, while the number who left is 84,048. According to this the loss of population was only 10,962, but we find on an analysis of the returns that we have lost 19,298, and the question is : Where are are the 8336 which make up the difference ? Mr Brown, the Begistrar-General, has been asked to explain this, but he said he could not do so. There ean be no doubt as to how the discrepancy arose. These 8336 persons went aboard ship without having previously booked at anp of the shipping offices, and consequently nothing was beard of their departure. But, putting that aside, one fact presents itself to us. We lost over 90,000 ot our colonists and we got 73,000 new chums in their stead. To the loss of 19,288 persons we must add their value as compared with the new chums. It is no use to pooh-pooh this. It was not the loafer and the drunkard who went away, but the real, sturdy, enterprising spirits, who had sufficient means and pluck to encourage them to try their luck in foreign lands. It is impossible, therefore, to estimate what we have lost during the glorious days of the good Sir Harry. We do not know, and we shall never know, our loss, but it must be patent to anyone that to a colony like ours, which up to that time had been spending immense sums of money on immigration, and which still suffers from sparsity of population, it must be very serious.

In the sixteen yean previous to 1886 we spent £2,077,421 17b 4d on bringing 109,244 immigrant! into this colony, yet, by the terrible muddling of the lute Government a very large proportion of these have been forced to leave the colony. And all this was done to conserve the interests of the wealthy classes. If the Stout-Togel Government had not been hurled from power all these people would have been living in the colony at the present time, and large numbers of them would have been settled on the land. The Hon. John Ballance .had only just commenced his special settlement e j stem, aud if he had been allowed to carry it on the result wauld haye been % ery different to-day. But he was not. He was succeeded by the sworn enemy of the system, and the result was our population fed. We put it to any reasonable being now: Would it not have been better to have spent a few thousands of pounds in settling these people on the land, as Mr Ballance had been doing, than to have allowed them to leave the colony? Tbey would now have been working in our midst, most of them digging their own livelihood out of the land, increasing our exports, consuming our imports, bearing their share of the burden of taxation, and augmenting the profits on our railways. We think it would have been better to have kept them, and hence our opposition to the muddlers who drove them away.