Page:The A. B. C. of Colonization.djvu/9

4 are unable to state how much they can contribute. This first step is highly encouraging to the benevolent who may feel disposed to aid struggling families and deserving individuals.

In propounding any new plan, it is usual, and it may become desirable, at times, in order to elucidate one^s own, to refer to some existing system of the same nature; if then I have to revert to the mode of emigration carried on by her Majesty^s Emigration Commissioners, and have to remark that some grave evils exist which ought to be rectified, I must at the same time allow that they have had to compete with many difficulties, and that I know from long tried experience in these matters, that the greatest care cannot at all times prevent abuses. In this emigration it must be borne in mind, that the Board of Commissioners are but the agents of the squatting interest, or men of capital in the Australian Colonies, and that they are often necessitated to enforce rules which their best feelings must shrink from. Indeed, it has always been a source of deep regret to me that an office which is precluded by stringent regulations from carrying out a national system of colonization, should ever have been called. Her Majesty's Land and Emigration Commissioners; for I would have her Majesty's name connected in the minds of the peasantry of England, Ireland, Scotland, and of the Colonies, with every feeling that could cherish their loyalty and conciliate their affection,—I should like every one to feel that under that revered name it mattered not, when they made application for a passage, what country they came from, so that they were British subjects—what creed they professed, so that they were loyal and peaceable men. I hold it to be derogatory to the high and moral feeling of Englishmen, that under the insignia of