HOLLOWAY'S VISIT TO ROXBURGH.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 343, 1 April 1874, Page 3

HOLLOWAY'S VISIT TO ROXBURGH.

(To tlie Editor.) SIE. — Mr. Holloway's observations at Roxburgh, though they were unprepared call for some comment, If Mr. H. considers the social position of the working classes here so very enviable, when compared to tho position they occupy in England, I ask him, what object the laborer of tho old country can possibly have to emigrate if it were not to improve his position. The improvement however, which the Colony holds out as an inducement must naturally be equivalent to the many hardships and privations to which the settler necessarily must expose himself and his family on his way out, as Well as on his first arrival in the Colony. Are such hardships as those the passengers of the Surat underwent to go for nothing ?' t Are the manifold difficulties which New Chums, if married, have to contend with till they become thoroughly acquainted with colonial life to have no weight in the scale at all? No doubt the Dorsetshire laborer quoted by Mr. Holloway receives but seven shillings for the six days of the week, but these few shillings will carry him farther in the supplr of his comforts and necessaries than three times the amount will in the Colonies. If tho eyes of Mr. Holloway were not opened before his visit to Roxburgh, the more credit is due to the inhabitants of that place for the pluck they showed in undeceiving him. No doubt this Colony offers a vast field of lucrative employment for part of the surplus population of Great Britain, were its management in the hands of honest and wellmeaning men ; but if its Government is in the hands of men, who are nothing but a selfish money-craving company of mercantile speculators, that look upon their position of power and trust, as a digger would on a well paying claim ; in that case it can only become the tomb of all the glowing expectations and hopes, with which the intending emigrant leaves the old country. — I am, &c., Anti-Sham. Horseshoe Bend.