The Sun.
London, England, 1862-04-22 00:00:00

v) )7
1)

Now, we need not waste time in explaining how great

a benefit it would be both to the new countries and to the
old one, if the half million of women who are so sorely
wanted there were supplied out of our embarrassing re-
dundance. The only practical question that exists for
consideration is how it can be managed. That there are
hundreds of thousands of women who would be willing and
anxious to go, there is no doubt whatever. But they do
not know how to see about it. They have no funds to pay
their passage; they have no protectors to take them out,
and take charge of them on the passage ; and they have no
home ready to shelter them when they arrive. The first de-
sideratum and the last can bo easily supplied, and we have
no doubt will be supplied as soon as the subject excites the
proper degree of attention. The colonies would be ready
enough to allow large sums for the purpose, if they could
feel sure of having the right sort of female emigrants sent
out. All who go out are engaged as soon as they land,
either as wives, dairymaids, as servants, or as governesses.
Nor would there be any difficulty or backwardness in pro.
viding homes for receiving them on their arrival, similar to
those which Mrs. Chisholm set on foot some years since ;
for it is evident that without this arrangement decent
women will never trust themselves to the chance fate of
arriving without any respectable place to go in a new and
strange country. Protection and guardianship on the voy-
age out is the real perplexity. Without such protection it
is clear that but few would go ; yet the difficulty of provid-
ing such protection for the vast numbers who are wanted
is unquestionably very great. Mrs. Chisholm's plan was
perhaps the best, but v., e want it organised on a great
scale. She persuaded every emigrant family that went
to Australia to take charge of a certain number of
young women on the voyage, and grouped the rest into
extempore families under some competent chaperon. We
are fully alive to the difficulties of detail in such a stchnceemoei
but we are equally certain that, as soon as the irapor
overcome.a
will
lir b
ea.
h
the object is realised, all these difficult,ieesnwt
Another embarrassment arises in a differ
ar .
ee d tuhno
ds
ae n ftruction omere Theare
women most wanted in thecool
oniasr
agricultural classes. The women most
accus-
tomed to a town life. But this embarrassment will diminish
from the middle and upper classes, and from those accus-
eno enormously, if not vanish altogether, as soon as it is looked
boldly in the face. For, as we hinted at the outset, the
power of adopting themselves to new circumstances, of
meeting and managing the difficulties of an unaccustomed
life, is one which women as well as men will be found to pos-
sess in exact proportion to their natural intelligence and their
acquired culture. The more educated a woman is, provided
her health bo good and her notions sensible, the more re-
sources she will have ; the more pliable she will prove, the
better colonist will sho become. Those who would wish to
emigrate, too, would be those who have had to struggle with
at home, who have been well trained
ihna hardship
of
and de poverty
and xeself-denial,rtion and who, in going,
would know well what was before them. They would, we
are persuaded, after a year or two be found more available
and more successful than mere uneducated dairymaids, or
than that large class of labourers' daughters from Dorset—
shire or Bucks to whom poverty has taught nothing but
dull endurance, who can endure bad food and bad lodging
without murmuring because accustomed to nothing bet-
ter ; but who, for the very same reason, would neither
know how nor desire vehemently to amend either the one
or the other.