The Sun.
London, England, 1849-02-09 00:00:00

IM RIdRATION-TA X.

Lord STANLEY rose to ask the Noble Lord, the
Secretary for the colonies, what measures had been taken
to induce the Colonial Legislature to reduce the tax
imposed upon immigrants entering the British Colonies
in North America. Several of his own tenants were
about to emigrate, and he wished to know whether it
would be prudent to advise them to go to Canada, or to
transfer the labour to a more hospitable, though foreign
region. _ _

•
Earl GERY said that he had received a dispatch, stating
that it was the intention of the Government of Canada to
propose to lessen the tax on emigrants. It should be re-
collected that in Canada much greater assistance was
afforded to immigrants than in the hospitable state to
which allusion had been made, New York. In Canada
they were forwarded to the remotest part of the colony
at the public expense, whereas in New York no assist-
ance was afforded them, and it was necessary that the
towns of Canada should adopt some measures to prevent
the immigrants from becoming burdensome to them.
and last year, notwithstanding the tax, the emigrants
sent out (from this country were fully as numerous as
the colony could absorb. The greater number who
went out were unskilled labourers. The dispatches
would .be presented to Parliament in a very few days,
and that the House would be in possession of much
valuable information on the subject.
Lord MONTEAGLE was not surprised to hear that
there had been difficulty in proxiding for the emigra-
tion of 1847. The great objection made by the Cana-
dians was not to the number of the emigrants, but to the
disease, the fever,which the emigrants brought with them.
The tax was so heavy that it had failed to increase the re-
venue of the colony. It was too high, and therefore it failed
He could show that as emigration had been diverted by
the increase in this tax from the British colonies, so had
emigration to the United States increased. At the time
the Passenger Act was passed in this country, we were
not aware of the passing of this measure of taxation by
the Canadian Legislature, and thus emigration to
Canada suffered a double discouragement. He denied
that the tax was applied to promote the comfort of emi-
grants. In New Brunswick it was applied solely to
colonial purposes, and with regard to the transmission
of the emigrants in Canada, it was so singularly de-
fective that the spread of fever in Canada was almost
solely attributable to the method adopted for forwarding
these emigrants. The United States fprovided for the
transmission of emigrants.
Earl GREY—No, no.
Lord MONTEAGLE was at issue with his Noble
Friend. The United States Legislature had enacted that
railway companies should provide cheap trains for the
transmission of emigrants,and surely that was an assistance.
He wished to see a better system of emigration to Ca-
nada established, and the question would ere long force
iptoserltfsofrnotmhtewaehtite ention of their Lordships. He concluded
by giving notice that he should on Monday move for a
return of h
numberhthey embarked
Earl who had left the
United Kingdom during the course of last year, and the
Earl GREY thought the British colonies had been
most unjustly censured, more especially when he re'
membered the noble efforts which those colonies had
made to mitigate the distress which prevailed in 1847.
He thought it was impossible to find a country in which
public affairs were more efficiently conducted than in that
colony, and the statesmen of that country had record
their opinion that as many immigrants had arrived in
that colony as the colony could absorb. He repeated
that immigrants and their baggage were forwarded
for Quebec and Montreal gratuitously, while in New
York the railroad arrangement, alluded to by the,
Noble Lord,
was merely of a similar charac-
ter to the enactment making it compulsory
railway companies in this country to run trains at a
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