The Express.
London, England, 1853-08-10 00:00:00

TESTIMONIAL TO 'MRS. CHISHOLM.

Mrs. Chisholm, whose practical beneficence has
often been recorded in our columns, is about to leave
England, to resume in Australia the work of family
colonisation. After thirteen years of hard, unre-
quited, most useful, successful labour on behalf of the
humblest classes of the community, and in the pro-
motion of the soundest principles of colonisation, her
zeal has not slackened—she is not wearied with
doing good. With undiminished energy and cou-
rage, she has determined to apply her talents and
experience to the difficulties which have arisen cut
of the golden discoveries of Australia.

Whru in 1817 Mrs. Chisholm brought to this
country the results of the seven years she passed iu
colonising New South Wales, our workhouses were
crowded, employment was scarce, and the owners of
property were filled with a vague dread of an inva-
sion of devouring pauperism. At that time,although
a vague notion was prevalent that emigration sl as
the true remedy for removing the distress of the
country, no one dreamed of so distant a field as Aus-
tralia being available for that purpose; and, indeed,
no one propounded any practical plan for carrying
out the emigration which all admired in the abstract.

Mrs. Chisholm, whose peculiar characteristic it is
to patronise no hobbies, to learn as she lives, and
neither to sacrifice her friends nor her protfye•s to
any empirical system, soon gave up the favourite
colonial notion—which has been misnamed a National.
but which meant a Government, a bureaucratic, system
—of colonisation. She saw that it was essential that
to render Australian colonisation continuous it
should be self-supporting and independent of govern-
ment aid.

So rapid, so excited has been the progress of
affairs, during the last six years, that we are likely
to forget the very great difficulties which Mrs. Chis-
holm had to overcome in her imposed task of esta-
blishing self-supporting family colonisation. She
had to gain the confidence of the working classes ; in
that she was assisted by many hundred commissions
with which she was charged for discovering wives,
children, and other more distant relatives of free and
prisoner colonists, anxious to share their prosperous
employments with their townsfolk. She bad to make
the advantages of Australia as an emigration field
known among those whose education and reading were
alike limited. In this task she was able to draw up
and circulate a rich store of evidence from the many
hundred statements which she had taken down word
for word from the mouths of humble thriving settlers
during her journeys through the" Bush" of Australia.
She had to reform the system of packing poor
emigrants with less comfort and not more decency
than pigs in a sty, and to devise a plan which should
in effect reduce the cost of passage within the
means of the labouring classes. In spite of
bitter interested opposition, the discouragement
of neglect and ridicule, she succeeded in establish-
ing her Family Colonisation Loan Society, which
showed the emigrating classes the power of small
savings and mutual association as applied to emigra-
tion,—and which, for the first time, set an example
of anxious care for the preservation of the modesty
and decent feelings of humble emigrants as well as
for their health and comfort.

After seven years—during which her door, ever
open to all who came for advice, assistance, comfort,
and encouragement—day and night engaged in re-
ceiving and answering thousands of letters—often
travelling the length and breadth of the kingdom
without fee or reward to meet those anxious
for her guiding presence—Mrs. Chisholm returns to
Australia to pursue, under very different circum-
stances, the work she commenced in 1839.
Australian emigration no longer needs a stimulus
—rather the reverse. The wee of a society like the
Familiy Colonisation Loan Society have passed
away. We may now trust to the competition of
shipowners, the increased knowledge of emigrants,
and the pressure of public opinion for the steady im-
provement of emigrant ships. Perfect ventilation,
enclosed cabins, washhouses and baths, will soon, by
the rule of self-interest, be as much the rule
as they are now the praiseworthy exceptions
in emigrant ships. Loans from the chari-
table wealthy are no more required now than
premiums for making deposits in savings banks.
The working classes fully understand the
principles of Mrs. Chisholm's plan, and will, doubt-
less, whenever needed, work it out as they have
worked out other benefit associations. But in Aus.
tralia there still remains a wide field of usefulness
for the exercise of Mrs. Chisholm's influence and
vigorous common sense.
Among the successful gold diggers there are thou-
sands who have left their wives and children in this
country dependent on public or private charity.
There are others who only need her well-earned in-
fluence to divert them from the waste and debauchery
of towns to the cultivation of the soil, and the civilis-
ing influences of domestic life. Others, again, who
have failed at gold digging, for which they
were never fit, require to be directed and
encouraged by Mrs. Chisholm to other more
suitable employments. In 1844, it was her
task to show the colonial government and the
colonists how some thousand unemployed emi-
grants could be profitably and happily distributed
through the interior. In 1854 her mission will be
to reunite the helpless at home with their successful
kinsfolk in the colony, and to turn the stream of
gold from the purchase of imported wines to the
cultivation of Australian vineyards, from the tavern
to the freehold homestead.

The meeting held in the City yesterday, and re-
ported in another column, was held for the purpose
of raising a testimonial of the sense the British public
entertain of Mrs. Chisholm's great services in the
cause of national colonisation, and partly to raise a
fond which will enable her to pursue without check
from straitened means those useful labours to which
she has devoted her life.
It is certain that this movement to do honour to
a lady, who unites with zealous disinterested unsec-
tarian philanthropy a degree of common sense and
plain practical wisdom honourable to her sex, will be
met in a manner worthy a great commercial, reli-
gious, and charitable country.

SUBMARINE AND EUROPEAN TELEORAPII COMPA-
NIRS.—The above companies' land line to Birmingham
having been connected with the offices, No. 30, Cornhill,
and UM, New-street, the company commenced transmitting
despatches on Monday lest. The communication between
the respective termini was found to be more than usually
perfect, and the transmitting media apparently without
flaw. There was no public ceremony upon the occasion ;
and the only causes which render the event remarkable arc
the great reduction in the tariff—the former amount of
2s. 6d. being reduced to 19., the Is. 3d. additional
charge for each 10 words above the minimum of 20
having been changed to a tariff of 6d. for each additional
10 words, or fraction of 10 words; and the somewhat grati-
fying circumstance that the great link lines of Europe are
now continued in one unbroken chain of communication
front the continent through London and northwards as far
as Birmingham. The companies' line to Manchester and
Liverpool is to be rapidly proceeded with.