Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-02-28 00:00:00

COLONIAL DELUSIONS

Wz are afraid that there are Colonial delusions
issuing from too many of the British provinces,
both in America and elsewhere, just now ; and a
letter we published a few days since, from New
Brunswick, testified strongly to the grievous
mistake which our labouring population must
make who, under such an influence, go out as
emigrants there, in the hope, which is the life and
soul of all emigration, of bettering their
present condition, and making some more
certain provision than they find, or think,
they can do at home, for their families
for the future. It is unquestionably a worthy
motive, and we should be sorry to say a
single word in discouragement of such emigration,
only let it be to places where the industrious man
will have some chance of finding it to his advan-
tage. But it is evident that our Colony of New
Brunswick is not at present one of such places.
Somebody, it seems, has been writing home, and
getting published, accounts of the desirable oppor-
tunities it is pretended that the Colony presents for
the English labourer—how sure he is to improve
his condition, and that of his family, by removing
thither. But the correspondent whose letter has
appeared in our columns, who wrote from the very
spot, who is a gentleman living upon and culti-
vating his own estate, and one possessing the best
means of being correctly informed, and whom we
ourselves know to be of the highest respectability
and trustworthiness in every respect, gives a flat
contradiction to the statement in question. The
great delusion of all appears to be; as to the wages
that can actually be realised. The amount seems
large, and the temptation therefore is great ; be-
cause it is of course taken for granted that the
promised wage is a reality, as it is in this country,
instead of its being, as too often it is, a most cruel
take-in

" The present promised race of wages
in the woods," says our reliable correspondent,
"is from £2 10s to £3 lOs currency per week,
and be it known to all English labourers, that this
wage is not paid by the week, or even by the
month, but may, or may not, be received even in
May or June, when those labourers are professed
to be settled with by their employers. No ! They
are almost invariably compelled by their necessi-
ties, and by the dread of being finally cheated out of
their hard earnings, to take out their pay from
lumber stores, or orders in provisions or clothing
for their families, at enormously enhanced prices;
and for this sad state of flings, in the present
state of the lumber sy stem, there appears to be no
remedy, since those who make the laws in the
House of Assembly are, as the majority, mostly
large lumber-men themselves, or intimately con-
nected with the lumber system." So that instead
of the poor hard-toiling labourer or workman
getting the sum he was promised, and no doubt
would fairly earn, he may possibly not realise a
fourth of it, even after a delay which may have
subjected him and his family to great privation
and suffering. It can be no improvement, there-
fore, but, on the contrary, a very decided deterio-
ration of the condition of the English labourer,
emigrating to New Brunswick, and entering upon
such a state of life, tempted thereto by the false
allurement of nominal high wages for his toil,
which turn out, as our correspondent has
described, to be a most heartless and mischievous
delusion. And hence it has come to pass, in that