MIGRATION TO NEW ZEALAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 May 1939, Page 11

MIGRATION TO NEW ZEALAND

FAR-SEEING OBSERVER IN 1874. It is rrtentioned in the .“New Zealand Centennial News” that among the most interesting manuscripts made available for copying as a direct result of the letter of Mr James Thorn, M.P., published in the London “Times,” are the four diaries kept by Christopher Holloway during a tour of New Zealand in 1874. The writer’s son, the Rev W. J. Holloway of Newbury. Berkshire, England, has kindly lent these diaries to the National Historical Committee. Christopher Holloway came out to New Zealand at the expense of its Government as the representative of the agricultural labourers of England, people who certainly had more to gain by migrating than any other section of the English population. Aftei’ extensive trips through the country the investigator proved his penetration when he met an assembly of well-to-do gentlemen in Dunedin on April 10, 1874; the political philosophy he combated had a surprisingly modern flavour. Here is a passage (without alteration of the text): “Gave my promis’d address in the Masonic Hall this evening, the Mayor in the chair, to a crowded audience, subject of the address ‘My Impressions upon New Zealand as a Field for Emigration.’ The audience upon the whole gave me a fair and candid hearing, and at the close of my address put to me several questions, several of them not bearing upon the subject at a 11... I must say with reference to this meeting that I was astonish’d at the excessive selfishness of these men. Here is one of the finest countries in the world —as large in extent as the United Kingdom, with the exception of 1,000,000 acres —possessing one of the healthiest climates in the world —a country everywhere well-water’d —rich in mineral resources, and a soil that is very productive — with a population of only about 300.000 people (no more than we have in the town of Birmingham), yet if its resources were properly develop’d is capable of sustaining ten or twelve millions of people. Yet these selfish men would have us believe that the country is . not so prosperous a state as it is represented to be, that its present prosperity is only the effect of borrowed money —and that as soon as the money is spent and the public works are finished —that then there will come a reaction, and that the greatest poverty and distress will follow. Poor deluded men. never was there a greater delusion- —labour produced capital and capital means an increase of trade and commerce ...

population increase. Labour will increase also, and the future prosperity of the country will be realised.”