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ON EMIGRATION.

The necessity of immediate measures to relieve this country from the evils of a redundant population, and to supply the deficiency of labourers in the Colonies, is becoming daily more urgent. The following plan for securing both objects, economically and effectually, is suggested as the result of some experience in the management of the poor:—

Let the following clause be inserted in the next Act of Parliament, relating either to Pauperism or Emigration:—

"Be it further enacted, that in case the Legislature of any of Her Majesty’s Colonies or Dependencies, shall see fit at its own cost to establish Schools of Industry, in which Boys and Girls, from their eleventh or twelfth to their fourteenth year, shall receive religious and moral training, and be instructed in arts best adapted to make them useful Colonists, under regulations satisfactory to the Governor of the Colony, and the Bishop of the Diocese: it shall be lawful for the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty’s Treasury to contribute from the Consolidated Fund the sums required for the removal of Pauper Children from any of the Outports to such Colony. And it shall be further lawful for the Board of Guardians of any Parish or Union, in any part of the United Kingdom, to defray out of the Poor’s Rates under their management, the expense of removing a child to the outport, and maintaining it in such Colonial School of Industry, provided always, that the expense thereby incurred shall not exceed the cost of supporting such child during a period of two years in the Parish Workhouse, or in the Pauper Union School of the district, within which it may have a settlement: provided, also, that such child be an orphan, or abandoned by its parents; or that its parents or guardians consent to its removal."

The following are the advantages of the above scheme to the Child, to the Colony, and to the Mother Country.

1. As regards the Child, a Colonial School of Industry would be far preferable to the Workhouse, or Pauper Union School. For in the Colonial School, the children being nearly of the same age, and admitted at the same time, and for the same period, would be free from many sources of moral contamination, especially that of new inmates, imported fresh from scenes of profligacy.

2. As the School would be surrounded with 300 or 400 acres of land, in pasture, and under tillage, the inmates would easily be provided with a variety of useful and healthy employments, and might be classified in any way most conducive to their moral improvement.

3. During their period of training they would be often visited by the Colonists, who would acquire an interest in them, and would prefer their services to those of young persons sent directly from Ragged Schools or Pauper Schools at home, and recently contaminated by unrestrained intercourse with each other, during the confinement of a long voyage at a critical period of life.

4. On leaving School, instead of suffering the misery of being looked upon as supernumeraries, and an oppressive burden, by the overcrowded society of the mother country, they would find their service in demand, wages high, provisions cheap, rates and taxes almost unknown.

To the Colony the advantage is obvious, of being abundantly supplied with eligible emigrants: not convicts, nor prostitutes, nor decayed gentlemen and ladies, nor clerks, musicians, artists or shopmen, nor unreclaimed juvenile offenders, veterans in iniquity; but boys and girls who have spent at least two years in the colony, under a system of training designed to make them active, intelligent, and honest servants, as well as faithful Christians.

The advantages to the Mother Country would be, perhaps, the greatest of all. It would be relieved, at an expense hardly to be mentioned, from a large portion of its redundant population. The Colonial School of Industry, once established, would be nearly self-supporting: for the children would be fed and clothed from the produce of their own industry. Each School accommodating 1200 children (600 boys and 600 girls), and keeping them two years, would require 600 young emigrants every year. Fifty Schools in different parts of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and North America, would create an annual demand for 30,000, and the emigrants thus expatriated would not be respectable farmers, small capitalists, or even able-bodied workmen, but children of the lowest class in society, the future inmates of our workhouses, our tramp-sheds, and our jails.

The only practical question in reference to the above scheme is, whether the several parties concerned would take the share assigned to them in carrying it into effect. Would the Government be willing to incur the expense of conveying the children from the Outport to the Colony? Would the Colonial Legislature, in consideration of the sum which the Board of Guardians might be justified in advancing with each child, be induced to defray the cost of its maintenance in the School till it should be old enough to be apprenticed, or to earn in any way its own subsistence? And what sum would a Board of Guardians be justified in advancing with each child, annually or in a single payment, not with the hope merely, but with the certainty, of being relieved from all further expense on its account?

Kensington,
1st January, 1848.

NOTICE is hereby given, that in pursuance of the provisions of the Imprisonment for Debt Ordinance, Session 3, No. 7, the Court will sit at Auckland, on Thursday the tenth day of May, 1849, for the hearing of applications for relief, and for the despatch of all business arising under the provisions of the above Ordinance.

Thos. Outhwaite,
Registrar.

Supreme Court Office,
Auckland, 13th April, 1849.