ASSISTED IMMIGRATION
[WESTPOIIT EYENING STAR.] As all matters affecting the great question of immigration to the shores of New Zealand provo of present interest to all classes of colonial society, and the result of the experiment of granting free passages to immigrants is watched with anxiety, as being in efFect the cardinal point of success in the Immigration and Public Works scheme, it is well to consider a3 of collateral interest the efforts made elsewhere, not alone by the government but by the people themselves to promote the great migration of souls from the Old World to the New. America the great field for immigration affords the best example, and the following extract from an English paper called The Hour will be perused with interest. It illustrates the efforts made by the poorer class of emigrants to aid their friends at home, not so much to lessen their discomforts, in the land of their nativity, as to afford them means of journey to their kindred who have already braved the perils of the sea and found homes and comfort in a strange land. ADr N. Hancock, so says The Hour, recently read a paper at a meeting of the Dublin Statistical Society on the subject of " Irish Immigration, and its consequences" proving the enormous services exiles have rendered to their abandoned country by the remittances sent home to solace and aid those left behind them. It would scarcely be credited—although the report of the Local Government Board, from which Dr N. Hancock derives his information, clearly establishes the fact—that in twenty-one years from 1552 to 1572 the remittances sent from America by emigrants to their friends in Ireland largely exceeded the amount levied during the same period by rates for the relief of Irish indigence—the latter amounting to £13,107,000, whiie the former reached the enormous sum of £14,830,000. That is to say, the voluntary contributious of the emigrants towards the necessities of their kinsfolk exceeded by no less than, in round numbers, £1,250,000 the sum levied by law for the maintenance of the entire pauper population of the country. In the year 1572, not a favorable one to the laboring classes in the United States, the remittances reached £750,000, while only £729,000 was appropriated to the relief of destitution at home. "It is impossible," as Dr. Hancock remarks, " not to see what a gigantic social force these remittances arc, whether regarded as characteristic of the Irish emigrant, or as affecting questions connected with the condition of the Irish laboring classes." The plain, positive, selfevident moral to be deduced from these facts is just this: —That if the New Zealand Government would ensure a steady and unremitting flow of immigration to these shores it will be necessary to first ensure that the population already iu the country shall look upon it as a permanent abiding place, and that the inducements for permanent settlement shall also induce colonists, of whatever nationality, to send home remittances for their friends. Nominated immigrants at present come in scanty numbers because the inducement of a free passage is not backed up by hearty and spontaneous words of welcome from those who have gone before them. In a word faith in the country is not yet assured. The offer of free passages brings to there shores the riff raff and refuse of society but it does little more.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WEST18740403.2.26
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Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1164, 3 April 1874, Page 4
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561ASSISTED IMMIGRATION Westport Times, Volume VIII, Issue 1164, 3 April 1874, Page 4
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