hardening the heart against all able-bodied paupers of all descriptions, though, practically and really, such elements should never be allowed to enter the region of the dispassionate distribution of poor-relief. Centralisation* would lessen in a great degree the operation of local feelings and prejudices. The area of the poor-rate assessments can hardly be too wide, or the interest in its administration too indirect. Parishes and unions, with their local administrators, must be exchanged for county or half-county districts, with paid relief-distributors who would judge of applications for relief solely on their merits, in a judicial spirit alone. Then a great assisted-emigration scheme might be introduced, which would in course of time weed all branches of labour of their surplus hands, and gradually bring poor-relief down to a minimum of the really necessitous, unfortunate and afflicted. It is surely much more politic and certainly more humane to help men to emigrate than to deal out miserable doles with niggard hands,-to send them to a new, bright land, than to crack stones and pick oakum in the drear, dismal unionhouse. Emigration must be conducted upon regularly-defined principles; the day has gone by for desultory, hap-hazard emigration. Hitherto men have emigrated upon the reports of colonial agents, or they have read of marvellous wages in far-off climes and have betaken themselves and their penates to the El Dorado of their day-dreams. It requires some courage and shows great strength of character to sever at a blow all home associations, all the connections, links and ties of family and friends, to bid farewell for ever to old familiar faces and life-accustomed places, to launch out on the wide sea of life, to begin the world again in fresh climates, in different latitudes, among strange people. The greater number of such inspired emigrants have done well for * See Tocqueville on the advantages of centralisation, in France before the Revolution, chapter v. themselves, though at first the work was terribly uphill, the dangers and difficulties seemingly insurpassable for a time, and the memory doubtless often wandered back somewhat remorsefully to the old peaceful, quiet home in the native land. But the brave heart which sent them forth kept them up and sustained them in their troubles, until the way had been made clear, until all obstacles had been surmounted. But all this has changed, circumstances have altered, and it does not do to emigrate now without the fullest and most perfect information. Many of the colonies are becoming jealous of immigrants, and the artisans and working-classes generally in some large colonial towns, notably in Adelaide and Melbourne, are banding together to prevent the immigration of those whose competition they fear. Thus the workman escaping from the thraldom of English tradesunionism might find in Adelaide a more perfectly exclusive system in operation against him. XF CHAPTER V. F the Government were to establish a systematic assisted emigration to all the colonies and to all other countries' they would naturally obtain and collect the very best and the most trustworthy information with regard to the requirements of each place, its advantages and disadvantages to the workingclasses. If they do not inaugurate such a desirable scheme, the least they might do would be to collect and publish from time to time such particulars of various countries as would guide all those thinking of emigrating. There is nothing reliable now. The information given concerning the very few colonies to which the Government do grant assisted passages is very meagre and unsatisfactory, and as these particular colonies are of course most anxious to get immigrants, it must always be accepted cum grano salis. It does not by any means answer for intending emigrants to depend entirely upon the statements and accounts of the agents of colonies requiring emigrants, who offer grants of land and passages to be worked out upon arrival in the colonies. These agents will of course say nothing as to the drawbacks of their peculiar colonies-everything there is couleur de rose according to their description, and though the emigrant may think he has made a good bargain by getting his passage seemingly for nothing he will find upon his arrival that he is saddled with a heavy load, that things are not quite so desirable as they were represented, that there is an aboriginal war going on, as in New Zealand, which upsets trade and puts a stop to agriculture; or that there is a strong odour of convicts in the country, as in Sydney and Tasmania,* where the taint has not by any means died out, and whose influence hangs over the land like a pernicious blight. Or he may find that the climate, as in the country round Adelaide for example, with its six months' glaring summer and perpetual hot winds, is almost unbearable and utterly subversive of all energy and ability to do a fair day's work; or that some principal and necessary provisions are so dear as to make the advance of wages gained by this emigration merely nominal. No emigrant in these days should think for one moment of going abroad to better himself without having previously obtained full and reliable information as to the nature of the country of his selection, of its resources, climate, and especially as to the class of labourers required there. Terrible privations have afflicted many who have neglected to make such enquiries, from the earliest days of emigration. For instance, great numbers of well-educated persons of family and gentle blood, younger sons of noblemen, gentlemanly paupers unable or fancying themselves unable to work, not by any means ashamed to beg and finding that well dry at last, flocked to the colonies. They imagined that they would light upon an inexhaustible Golconda, or a very Hesperides garden of golden fruit to be had for the mere plucking. They found to their dismay that qua gentlemen they were a drug upon the market, that there was a great glut of their kind. They were compelled to throw away their black coats and their polish, and work as the most common labourers. Their sufferings of mind and body must have been frightful at first, until their refinement had worn away and their hands had hardened. Numbers of these gentlemen-born may be found now in all parts of New Zealand and Australia *Sir C. Dilke's Greater Britain, vol. ii. University men digging, rail-splitting, shepherding as if they had been "to the manner born." Sir Charles Dilke, in his amusing and graphic book Greater Britain, relates that a digger of Hokitika, in New Zealand, said to him "Seen our policemen? We don't have no younger sons of British Peers among them;" and in another place none but members of the older English Universities are admitted to the force. Sir C. Dilke also says that he was told by a squatter that he had an ex-captain of the Guards at work for weekly wages at a sheep-run, and that his neighbour had a lieutenant of Lancers rail-splitting at his station. Besides these gentlemen emigrants, who have made a huge mistake in thus emigrating, many first-class mechanics and artisans have found that the market for their kind of superior labour was overstocked, and that they have been compelled to forsake their craft and bend their unaccustomed limbs to rough manual out-ofdoor work. Many instances of similar huge mistakes might be multiplied, and all experience goes to show that working-men emigrants should get the most accurate information before they take the vital step of emigration. Besides, many of the colonial operatives, especially in the large towns, are setting their faces against the immigration of artisans of their particular professions. They are very powerful in the councils of the towns and cities, and are becoming more and more disposed to use their power to turn their trades into close guilds, and to keep their wages up to an unnaturally high standard-to their own absolute advantage, but to the disadvantage of the rest of the community. They are also clamouring loudly for protection, or that the importation of produce of every other country should be taxed, while their own should go forth free and untouched. This is now the reactionary cry of working-men at home and abroad. The men who sat at the feet of Cobden and Bright now reject them; the workingclasses who looked up to them as the very Gamaliels of political economy and national prosperity now, at a time of temporary |