GOVERNMENT ENCOURAGEMENT OF E MIGRATION.
Ix his speech against the New Zealand Bill, Lord HOWiCK boasted of the encouragement given to emigration by the present Government. Mr. %Vann had stated that more had been done for emigration by the new colony in South Australia than by any other colony : whereupon Lord Howicx said- " The honourable Member had overlooked, in the multitude of papers which were laid upon the table of the House, a very important paper—the last Report of the Agent for Emigration ; for there he would nut have found that very much had been done in Australia on the principle he contended for. It was difficult, and he admitted, in many cases desirably difficult, to remove the ob- jections of the people of this country to emigration : it might be useful for this object, therefore, if he read three lines of that Report, to show that the Colo- nial Office had not been wholly idle with respect to encouragement to emigra- tion. The ruble viscount then read a statement, from which it appeared, that the average number of persons emigrating annually, previous to the adoption of the present system, was 800; that the number last year reached three times that amount; and that about four times as many were to be sent out within the first half of the present year. He thought this statement completely dis- posed of the objection of his honourable friend, that the fund of which he spoke had nut been made a due use of for the encouragement of emigration. In fact, emigration was going on as fag as the amount of funds available would admit of; and he thought that, in justice to his noble friend at the head of the Colo- nial Department, it must be admitted by the honourable Member that this charge against the Government was not well founded."
Lord Howicx did not, it would seem, state the quarter to which emigrants had been sent at the public expense; and the omis- sion is important. We have extensive possessions in North America, where slavery, White or Black, of Convicts or Negroes, is unknown—where the state of society is healthful, as well as the climate. No aid whatever is given by Government to persons wishing to emigrate to the North American provinces. There is in South Australia a colony founded on principles now univer- sally acknowledged to be sound: that colony is prosperous, the climate excellent, there is no Convict or Negro slavery : the state of society is equal if not superior to that which exists in any other British colony. Not a soul is sent there by the Government.
On the other side of the immense island or continent of Austra- lia, is to be found what has been justly stigmatized as the most depraved community that ever existed on the face of the earth— where crimes indescribable, and almost inconceivable, are as com- mon as petty larcenies in London—and where pollution of the young and the inexperienced is inevitable. Into this colony Ministers are constantly sending emigrants and felons. This is the spot which they have selected, out of all the British foreign possessions, as that to which they will induce Englishmen with their fatuities to emigrate. The comparatively pure parts of the British dominions they shun as if the plague were there ; the most depraved of all communities they especially patronize. The other day, we saw announced in the same paper, the sentences of several scores of felons to transportation, and the emigration of some hundreds of farmers with their families from the county of Down to the same blessed spot, both alike at the public expense.
Such is the system for which Lord Howicg claims credit—such I the encouragement to emigration of which he boasts.
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