SERMON ON EMIGRATION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 420, 26 December 1874, Page 6

SERMON ON EMIGRATION.

The following is an abstract of a special sermon preached in England recently, by the Rev, R. F. Laurence, forty-two yeaw vicar of Ohalgrove, Oxon., to a large congregation of the laboring classes. The mere fact of the delivery of such a discourse by a gentleman so many years a clergyman of the Established Churn, is a remarkable feature of an extraordinary Bocial and political era in the history of England and her colonies :—": — " What have I now done ? Is there not a cause ?— 1 Samuel, xvii. 29." When last we met within these walls, pursuant to the very proper resolution of your association, to' show your reverence to God by going into his house to pray to Him, I addressed you on the subject of emigration, not simply because I saw in that resource the readiest way for you to free yourselves from the difficulties by which you are surrounded, but because there are advantages to be gained from it over and above that relief, which advantages I was anxious that you should share in ; and opportunities were offered you which you cannot expect will last for ever, and which it would be a pity that you should lose. For it does not appear to me that there is any middle course for you to pursue ; you must either make up your minds to go to distant lands, and share in their abundance, and thus enter upon prosperity, or you must make up your miuds to stay here and put up with that state of semislavery which alone is, open .to you ifl this country ; with the certainty that, when your work is over, yon' must rot in the work-house or starve in your own homes. There is no chance whatever that jour employers will sse, until the country, has been drained of its beßt laborers, that' it would be better that you Bhould not be allowed to go away, and so be led to make 1 such offera in the way of wages and. other advantages, as would induce you to atay. They axe far too much wedded to Old ideas, and far to fond of their fancied power to see what ,is quite as much for their own interest job for, yours. My endeavor then was to make you see, that there is no'truth whatever in' the assertion that men are tied by the law of God to any particular spot, so als that they should' not under any circumstances be allowed to go from it ; for that^ on the contrary, it has been decreed by Him from the beginning "that in this way the earth should be peopled and filled ; that though this is the ease, men are not to wait for any special call from the Almighty to go forth to other .lands to settle in, replenish and subdue them, or to be driven forth, as it were, by some act of compulsion, as He acts through moral forces only ; and that consequently they must decide for themselves at what time and to what places they should go, according as there seems to be a preponderance .of evidence in favor of the one or the other ; that there •is an abundance of proof that in a' "very short time indeed independence may be' achieved- by industrious agricultural laborers io Queensland, New Zealand, and Canada ; and that, as it it impossible that anything like independence can be realised here by persons, however able they may be, or however industrious, they niv^ht not to be kept back, unless through the means of the offer of similar advantages here. There is cause, and very good cause indeed, for complaint of the position of the agricultural laborer; cause for complaint not only as arising out of the varying tempers of men (for in whatever clime you may be, and under whatever circumstances, the little ills engendered thereby will always have to be contended with), but as arising out of a vicious system of farming, badly administered whether by landlords or tenants, and frequently through men who have no business to be tenants at all. and in which system no provision is made for the decent lodging of , the men whose labor produces the result that the tenant and the landlord look for ; a system in which a man is forced to labor from, day to day, almost fco starve, and yet to work on without intermission and without hope till the time comes for him to be cast aside as a worthless thing, or to be put down as a nuisance and when he shall be told thab he ought to thank God tot the blessing that has been provided for him at his employer's cost in a, workhouse ; or in the more 1 lingering death that he must face at home, upon a pittance that would hardly find lodging for a dog, and mtich less keep him. A man is doomed, to struggle fhrough life at a rate of wage's that is insufficient for the time present, and there is no room for saving up anything for the evil days ; and though we were to devise 'a most elaborate system of Savings Banks, it would be all to no purpose, as there is nothing to save. I would say then I " What have I now done ? Is there not a j cause ?" Can it be thought reasonable that they should be forced to stay here under circumstances like these, when there "are opportunities offered them whereby they can better themselves, and .this too, -without ; any sacrifices on their part 1 They are not slaves, but men ; and can yoju wonder that not the idle only, but the good are going away and looking for justice in distant lands? Is there no grievance. here — should such a possibility as this 1 be 'allowed toremain 1 Will it be altered ? I trow not ; for the honest British farmer is slow Blow of sight, and. is as obstinate ai he Js slow in seeing. A Btream of emigration .has begun to ,flow out, under circumstances that promise very, great results, and greater good will ensue from it 3 continuance. This is the only weapon that will set you free, the only one that you can use without injury to those of your own' class that are not Au;a position to accompany yon. Make use of it at once. Go forth a*id prosper! I say advisedly at once; for there are symptoms to, be discerned of the discontinuance of the system' of emigration which alone can benefit yon, and if it Bhould be' ! brouufht to an end at no very distant period, -the timewill'also quickly arrive in which you will no longer be, able to help y«hirselvjjjs. In the various colonies that 1 have, mentioned there is abundance of work; at the most liberal wages, and the prospect of independence as the result. Here you have no hope whatever of thissort; you can nut strugg^lon and die. If when this' is but plainly before you, as I have ever 'been anxioU3 to put it, you hesitate aa to . the course that you should%ur3ue, it is not for me to say more than that you must put up with the consequences, and sink down, as you necessarily must though it be by little only, and little at a time, into the most abject slavery.

Tho Real Carts de Visite.— A doctor's brougham. Gentle Spring.— The motion of Quiz's land? lady when she satiqh a bent pin. Whai is the difference between a mouse and a girl ?— One harms the cheese, and fhe other harms tho he's. , Con.;— Why is the song "Home, Sweet Home" like a serenade on a calm summe,T Bight ;— Because the.re fs music in the. m, «