STATE EMIGRATION AS A PARTY MOVE.
THE Tories, or rather that section of them which the Standard represents, are trying to buy the popular vote rby affecting great sympathy with distressed operatives, whose bread they taxed for years in order to keep up landlords' rents, and offering out of that sympathy to tax the householder in order to find his neighbour a comfortable home in the Colonies. This at least is their professed programme, and on 'Tuesday night its honesty was fairly put to the test. Mr. "Torrens, a Liberal, but a politician who thinks much of • Colonial interests, moved a resolution affirming that "to arrest the increase of pauperism and relieve the distressed condition -of the working classes, it is expedient that measures be adopted for facilitating the emigration of poor families to British .colonies," and supported it in a speech in which he demanded £1,000,000 from the Consolidated Fund, and £1,000,000 more from the rates, to send abroad 50,000 families, who must, he admitted, be mainly agriculturists, but whose departure would relieve the pressure towards the towns. His demand was -extremely clear, the exact counterpart of the Tory proposal, -and it was supported by exactly forty-eight members, of whom one-half vote usually with Mr. Gladstone. About one in nine of the Tories voted for the proposal, which was to show the workmen so conclusively that " Codlin is the friend, not Short." The remainder of the party, eight - ninths of them, stayed away, either be- -cause they perceived the ineptitude of a proposal which :grants to men who go abroad, money which would make them comfortable at home, or because they, as county members, feared the annoyance of the tenant-farmers, who do not want to see their labour carried off whole- -sale, either to British Columbia or anywhere else. At all events, they stayed away, thereby showing, on the Standard theory, that the Tory party, so far from being a party which desires to relieve distress by grants, and is prevented by those wretched Liberals with their poli- tical economy from doing so, does not care enough about it even to attend the House while it is being discussed. Not one leader of Opposition, not one man of mark, opened his lips upon the subject ; and Mr. Newdegate, the most thoroughly representative of all the Tories who spoke, did not like the project. It was not, let the workmen observe, in the least degree a case of a party voting against an irresistible majority, doing its best, in fact, and accepting defeat ; the party did not come, did not attend, declined even to listen to the arguments in favour of the clients to whom they are said to be so devoted. They are not devoted at all more than the Liberals, but want to raise an impression that the Ministry is very harsh because it wishes, instead of exporting the poor at the expense of the house- holders to countries to which they do not wish to go—for, as Mr. Gladstone showed, three in four emigrants wish to go to America—so to lighten taxation, so to release trade, and so to simplify tenures, that all who will work may find full and remunerative employment at home. It is, in fact. the Ministry which offers work, the Standard Tories who prefer to offer alms and banishment.
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