The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-15 00:00:00

PROPOSED EMIGRATION OF THE

UNEMPLOYED.

On Saturday evening a large public meeting was held in
the Agricultural Hall, for the purpose of promoting the
emigration of the unemployed to the British colonies. Mr.
R. R. Torrens, M.P., presided ; and after recounting his
personal experience of a settler's life in Australia, he said
that emigration, although perhaps not an agreeable
thing for a man to contemplate, was a far more manly
course to pursue than to remain at home in poverty—
whether it was that kind of poverty in which a workman
could not get an adequate remuneration for his labour,
or whether it was of that more genteel type which hid
itself in silent misery and want. These evils had
produced emigration, and would always do so until the
waste places of the earth bad been populated, and the now
overcrowded labout market had been relieved. While
thousands were perishing for want of food in this country,
out in Australia meat was being thrown away in tons, and
there was this season a prospect of such an abundant har-
vest that wheat would probably be sold for 4s. a bushel.
The working classes of this country had been greatly
degraded, and in many ways robbed of their legitimate
rights. Mr. E. Gibbon Wakefield once propounded a
scheme to benefit the people and relieve the
country of its surplus population. He maintained that
the waste lands belonged to the people, and that it was
only a figure of speech to say that they were the property
of the Crown; and he proposed that instead of giving
them to Government favourites, they should be sold at
£1 an acre as a tentative price, and that the proceeds
should be expended in bringing out labourers to per-
form the work of cultivation. For a time the plan
was worked with admirable results ; but when the
matter got into the hands of the colonial secretaries
everything went wrong, because they did not under-
stand the question, and they soon deprived the people
of their just inheritance. They sold the lands and
spent the money in supporting the Government, instead
of making taxes for the purpose. Numerous places, how-
ever, still existed where an emigrant could succeed. There
was a fine tract of country as large as France near Natal,
which had been handed over to Dutch settlers by an
illegal document, and he thought that steps should be
taken to restore it to the English people, who were its
rightful owners, and not the 300 families who were now
in possession of it. It was absurd to suppose that none
but agricultural labourers could get on ; but intending
emigrants should be prepared to forego their own trades,
and turn their hands to whatever kind of labour offered
the best prospects of success. As an employer of labour
he wished to see the price of labouring work raised to Gs.
a day. Captain Wake, RN., Mr. E. Jenkins, Captain
Parker Snow, the Rev. A. S. Herring, and other gentle.
men having addressed the meeting, a series of resolutions
were passed asking for Government aid, and urging the
formation of emigration committees throughout the
country, and also for pressing upon the consideration of
Parliament the necessity of an emigration policy for 6.0
unemployed.