Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/93

 security and clear title. Having done so, in most instances, by virtue of years of hard work, thrift, and self-denial, and having at last secured a home for themselves and their children, they now find themselves called upon to break it up for the benefit of immigrants brought hither under a system of “assisted passages,” and, mark the irony of it, the funds for those “assisted passages” were drawn from the very settlers who are now despoiled.

What a difference there is between those virile early settlers (in their capacity for work, in their true grit, and in their standard of morality) and the assisted immigrants content to remain “assisted” to this day, for the instances are very few in which they have discharged their obligations to the Canterbury Government. These latter, having broken their own pledges to pay up their passage money, and having no mind to work for themselves, but yet being full of the greed of possession, turned their envious eyes on the estates of the pioneers, and began to clamour that those estates should be burst up in order that they might acquire homes without the trouble of making them. Being in the majority they had no difficulty in send-