The Sun.
London, England, 1867-09-12 00:00:00

EMIGRANTS WANTED IN VICTORIA.

(From the MtMourne Argus.)
We have been exporting large quantities of wheat
to England ; some of our squatters are making pre-
parations to boil down their sheep for tallow, in the
absence of a market for the meat; bread is selling at
from sd. to Gd. the 41b. loaf, beef and mutton from
3d. to Gd. per lb., potatotes at £3 per ton, and ex-
cellent wine of colonial growth at from 4s. to ss. per
gallon ; local production in all that concerns a sup-
ply of the necessaries of life is considerably in excess
of local consumption ; and the progress of the
colony is literally arrested by the want of immigra-
tion. These facts cannot be repeated too often, nor
impressed too strongly on the minds of our country-
.

men "at home." That there should be at one end

of the world a British community so thickly peopled
as that population is incessantly encroaching upon
the means of subsistence; that a million of paupers
are maintained at the public cost; that deaths from
cold and hunger are numerous and frequent ; that
children of tender years are driven to labour in the

fields in gangs, and are brutalised or destroyed in
the process ; that, in every walk of life, competition
is so intense that the applicant for employment is a
suppliant and not a negotiltor ; and that simulta-
neously with this state of things in the mother
country there should be one of her dependencies
in the South Pacific as large as England and
Wales, as fertile as Sicily, and as healthy as Nice,
craving for the superfluous capital and labour of the
parent State, but craving in vain, does appear an
inexplicable anomaly. We count our population

by hundreds of thousands only, while the country is
capable of maintaining
millions, with a wide field
for the enterprise of the restless and the adventurous
in the neighbouring colonies and in the innumerable

islands of the great Pacific.
What a mere handful of people has accomplished
in Victoria, chiefly since the year 1851, may be
accepted as an earnest of what may be effected by
still larger numbers, actuated by the same spirit
of industry and energy in the time to come. We
have built and conferred municipal institutions
upon upwards of sixty towns and cities, contain-
ing 70,000 habitable dwellings, more than 300,000
souls, and rateable property of the estimated value
of £20,000,000. Outside of their limits are the
rural shires and road districts to the number of
100, with 54,000 houses, 253,000 inhabitants,
ca
han
ludur
ec. rateablechurches
e s Foraud h
t chapelse property
spiritualhave been erected ; and for the
wants exceeding
vof th e
people 1,700
education of the young upwards of 700 common
schools have been opened, upon the rolls of which
the names of 70,000 children are inscribed. Some of
the most important towns of the colony are brought
intoildirect
and 3,000 miles of telegraph wire,
and 525 post-offices furnish the colonist with every
mrai
es of
railway cocamenication with the seaboard by 271
ay
requisite facility for the transmission of his corre-
spondence. Pastoral and agricultural pursuits pro-
vide employment for 55,000 men and women, mining
n
forof
sBeov ,eonroeaeol n
wpactnioto nearly 10,000 perscns exclusive
'and 900 miles and manufactories
afford
thousand who are engaged in various
handicrafts in Melbourne and other large towns.
The immigrant, therefore, finds the same social con-
ditions and the same diversified outlets for his
industry to which he has been
mother country. lie loses few
of the benefits bestowed upon it by its venerable
sakccilubstocamp
he gains largely by
civilisation, andthe superior ma-
terial advantages which a colon—
/ offers to the man
who has the courage to seize them, and the steadi-
ness of purpose necessary to turn them to their best
account. If he has a career to make, nowhere are
the obstacles to success so few in number, and so
easily surmountable, nowhere are the opportunities
for self-advancement so numerous and so inviting,
as in a new country, with a large area of unculti-
vated territory, and with resources of which all that
is known encourages the belief that those which
yet await development will exceed in variety and
value the most sanguine expectations of the enthu-
siast. To capitalists, to fundholders, and annui-
tants, to farmers possessing either a moderate
amount of money or a family of grown-up eons, to
sober and industrious artisans and labourers, with
a general aptitude for anything,
and a pliant adapt-
ability t 3 the circumstances and requirements of a
new country, Australia offers inducements for settle-
ment and assurances of reward such as are presented,
we will venture to say, by no other possession of the
British Crown.
We have shown what has been done within half
the lifetime of a single generation ; and this will
be repeated on a grander scale,
tionately enlarged results, during the next 8 or 10
years, if the mother country will annually send us
40,000 or 50,000 men to eat our superabundant sup-
plies of food, to assist in the cultivation of our
waste lands, to multiply the number of our
industrious, and to continue and extend the
work which has been so prosperously commenced.
Need we remind our fellow-ccuntrymen in England
that it is not thesecolonies alone which are benefited
by emigration. The parent State reaps from it ad-
vantages not less substantial than those which it
confers upon the dependency which receives the
efflux of population. There the emigrant has been a
competitor in the labour market, has divided with
another man the loaf which was scarcely adequate
for the support of either, and has been occasionally
an unwilling burden on the community, or on his
brother operatives ; but here he becomes one of their
beat customers, he assists to augment the supply of
the raw materials which form the staple of various
British manufactures, and his improved circum-
stances enable him to purchase commodities which
were beyond his reach at home. Thus every man,
woman, and child in Victoria annually consumes
manufactured articles the produce of the United
Kingdom, of the value of about £l2, while our im-
ports from other British possessions are equivalent
in value to £6 per head of our population. And
since there are branches of manufacturing industry
which can only be successfully prosecuted in coun-
tries possessing cheap capital, cheap labour, great
mineral wealth, and matchless means of intercom-
munication, like England, it follows that our sup-
plies of certain articles of general consumption will
continue to be drawn from thence for many years
to come, and that, therefore, the growth of our