474 MINUTES OE EVIDENCE BEFOEE SELECT COMMITTEE
A.
Cumnghdme, Apprentices with a fresh Fee, and many of them are thus precipitated by sheer
Esq.
Necessity into Guilt and Infamy.
Children of both Sexes, from Twelve to
—-Sixteen, especially if brought up in the Country, would be most useful in the 16th July 184*7.
£0jon^ jD orcjer to provide for the proper Management of these Children in the Colony on Arrival, I would propose that in the Capital of the Colony to which they are to be sent, Two Committees should be named by the Governor;, that for Boys to consist of Clergy of all Denominations, with an equal Number of Civilians, that for the Girls to consist of Clergy and Matrons.
To these Com¬ mittees should be intrusted the Duty of apprenticing out the Children for Three or Five Years, the Girls only to respectable Matrons, the Boys to well-conducted Householders, who should be bound to perform towards these Children all necessary Duties, and who, besides, should pay annually, during the Apprenticeship, a small but increasing Sum to the Emigration Fund; so that at the End of the Term the Colony would be reimbursed for the Cost of the Boys Passage, and would thus have gained an Adult trained to the Labours and Duties of Colonial Life.
There are also a Number of most useful and respectable Families anxious to go to Australia, but who may be somewhat above the prescribed Age, or the Children too numerous to come within the standing Regulations for free Government Emigrants.
In some Cases these people are willing to pay for the Passage of the younger Children, and a Portion of their own Passage ; in other Cases their Landlords or others would be willing to pay such a Portion of the Passage Money.
Families brought out on such Terms would be a great Gain to the Colony, for the Children, whose Passage thus costs the Colony nothing, would be a future Source of Power and Wealth to it.
Under such a System, if zealously and judiciously worked, the greatest Advantages might,accrue to the Colony, the Mother Country, and most of all to the Emigrants themselves.
Valuable Families might thus be transplanted from Pauperism here to Abundance there; Boys would be removed from the chilling Dependence of a Workhouse Life and Workhouse Prospects to a Country where the First Day of Manhood would bring with it practical Independence, and a few Years of well-directed Toil would secure them a Competence.
And Orphan Girls, whose Fate in this Country one can scarcely think of without a Shudder, would when their Ap¬ prenticeship int he Colony had expired find a ready and well-paid Demand for their Labour as single Girls, and the Certainty, if well conducted, of sooa getting respectably married.
I believe that if the Plan I have indicated were zealously and skilfully carried into execution any given Sum of Colonial Funds might be made to carry out nearly, if not quite, double the Number of Emi¬ grants which it now does; and that though from the larger Proportion of Children there might not be quite so large a proportionate Addition to the immediately available Labour as to the Number of Souls, it would nevertheless give a considerably greater Amount of actual Labour than the present, besides the immense Gain in the future, as every Year would convert a Number of these Children into useful Members of the Community.
But I must be permitted to add^ my Belief that the present System and Machinery of Emigration is totally inadequate to carry out the Plan I have indicated, for it must be obvious to your Lordships that this Plan requires Rules far more flexible and more capable of Adjustment to the special Circumstances of each particular Case than the present Regulations, and that the Machinery required is an Agency far more exclusively devoted to this special Object than is consistent with the numerous Duties and widely extended Avocations of the existing Land and Emigration Board.
I shall now, with your Lordships Permission, venture to suggest what would, in my Opinion* be the most effective Means of carrying out the Object in view.
I propose that there should be in each immigrating Colony an Immigration Department, on the Head of which would devolve the Buries, not merely ©f inspecting the Immigrants on Arrival, and of their Charge till they found Employment, but also of receiving regular Returns from eacl Bistrict of the Rates of Wages^ the Relations between the Demand and Supply for each Description of Labour, and of any Causes which might sooee alter suck Relations.
It would be his Duty when necessary to aid Labour in finding Employment, and Employers in finding Labour, to publish periodical Account* of the State of the Labour Market in each District, and to prepare Returns from Time to Time which should show the ireal Extent of the Bemand for
Labour
