Imágenes de página
PDF
ePub

DISADVANTAGE OF BEAUTY.

255

Mrs. I would like to tell you my plan-Do you see,' says I, 'if any gal would keep a man at home, it would be the creature I saw this morning: now,' says I, 'tho' Jack's not taken to drink, yet he's uncommonly fond of company, and is for going to every horse-race he hears of; and I expect, some time, he'll make a very foolish match, wi' some one more ignorant than he is :' yet, ma'am, tho' he can neither read or write, he's uncommonly 'cute. Now, I think, if I take home, she'll tempt him to stay at home; and then, when I see he's taken, and his heart is touched, I shall call him one side-bounce a bit, and say, 'I'll have no fine ladies living wi' me.' This opposition will make him more determined; then, in a day or two, I'll cry a bit about it—he's kind-hearted, and can't stand that: then he come coaxing me, and I'll consent, and talk over the old man; and the clergyman shall settle everything, and it will be a good thing for us all, ma'am.' I consented to arrange with who should be ready

the next day: she was engaged as a teacher for one year, salary £16.

"I may here remark, that pretty girls, no matter what their qualifications or characters were, it was difficult to dispose of them; they are not, it appears liked as servants, though they are preferred as wives."

CHAPTER XIX.

OUTFIT AND PASSAGE.

THREE MODES OF EMIGRATION: PAUPER EMIGRATION, ASSOCIATED EMIGRATION, FAMILY COLONIZATION, CABIN EMIGRATION-PREPARATIONS FOR VOYAGEOUTFIT CHOICE OF SHIP-LLOYD'S REGISTER- DIETARY-MEASUREMENTEXTRA STORES-SEA SICKNESS.

THE

HERE are three modes of emigration, and three classes in ships, which we take in the order of number-government or pauper emigration, associated or group emigration, and isolated emigration; so there are also cabin passengers, and second and third class passengers: between second and third there is little difference, except in name. Cabin passengers are not protected by law. They must depend entirely on the character of the brokers, the honour of the captain, and on the nature of the agreement into which they enter. There are brokers and shipowners, like other tradesmen, on whom the fullest reliance may be placed; there are others who do not think honesty the best policy. Many instances have occurred in which parties on going on board have found the cabins they had engaged in the possession of others; and complaints of the provisions, reasonable and unreasonable, are of daily Occurrence. The rapid, constant communication now opening with

Australia will soon make it a matter of course to provide satisfactory accommodation for cabin passengers. We expect this class will follow the course of passengers to America, and be conveyed almost entirely by the steamers.

Sailing-ships will then have to depend on £20 passengers, and below £20 on all persons who take what, under various flattering names, amounts to a steerage passage in the eyes of the captain of the ship. There can be no question that the best ships are those which carry only one class of passengers, where they have the full range of the vessel for exercise, and where, although they have to wait upon themselves, they are, at any rate, of as much consequence as any other passengers. Where ships are divided into first class, second class, and third class, the second and third class often come badly off. In the first place, although by the Passengers' Act a ship is restricted in the number of passengers that it can carry by the tons register and cubic feet (two tons and fourteen cubic feet to each passenger), it does not say how the space shall be divided; so that such inferior passengers often find that a lion's share of the space, as well as of the light and air, cooking power, and room for exercise, has been monopolized by the cabin passengers. They are left to the enjoyment of a bunk, big enough to turn in at night, with second-hand atmosphere when the hatches are down, meals when the cook has nothing else to do, and two or three yards for exercise.

The "packing" system has been carried to perfection in Liverpool, where it commenced in the American ships carrying helpless Irish, who were packed on open shelves, like hounds in a kennel, but less clean, airy, and comfortable. In many of these Australian ships decency is as little attended to as comfort. Curtains have recently, under the pressure of public opinion, been hung up before the berths. Until public attention was called to the fact, married men and women in government ships used to undress, sleep, and dress before each other, and private ships followed the same example. In the arrangement of water-closets, for both sexes, equally flagrant inattention to comfort and decency was and is displayed.

We have recently seen in the ship of a respectable firm the berth of a second-class single passenger divided from that of a married couple by a partition three feet high, with an open space of eighteen inches. This was an example of a very common case. If any representation as to the want of space and ventilation be made to a London broker, the answer is, "Look at the Liverpool ships."

In the quality of provisions served out a few days after the ships

DEFECTS OF THE PASSENGER ACT.

257 are clear of English ports the abuses in quantity and quality are equally flagrant.

It is true there is a government inspection, and all that the law permits to protect the emigrant is done in the port of London by that excellent and indefatigable officer, Captain Lean, the government emigration agent. But he cannot inspect all the provisions of a ship, and he has no power to enforce ventilation and many other regulations which he would if he could.

These heavy charges will be met by a loud cry of indignation, that we have written more than we are prepared to prove, with names and dates, and much more flagrant cases than any referred to. It is necessary that some one should speak out on whom "no interest can be brought to bear," as merchants do not care, and others do not dare, to protest against iniquities daily practised on helpless emigrants. In the session of 1851 a committee of the House of Commons was appointed "to inquire into the working of the Passengers' Act, and to report whether any and what further protection is required by emigrants during the passage, or at the port of embarkation."

The Right Honourable Sidney Herbert was chairman of this committee; one of the honestest men who has ever taken up the question of emigration; with talents, too, above the average, rank and large fortune, but who, for want of a dash of audacity, or in consequence of a sort of moral timidity,—a respect for the opinion of respectable shams,—does not always venture to follow his own judgment, and do and say what he knows to be right, without caring what the gossiping Mrs. Grundys of the great little world will say.

The committee collected an important and most disgusting body of evidence on the abuses practised in emigrant ships. As to remedies, they were less successful; the chairman could, but did not call the right witnesses. At any rate, a useful bill for amending the Passengers' Act was prepared, and improved by the notes of a very competent person known to the author.

"It would," said a Liverpool shipowner, "have played the very deucewith us; but we brought our interest to bear, and now we don't care twopence for it."

Since the passing of the Amended Passengers' Act, large ships have been sent out to Australia full of passengers, with whole rows of berths without light or any provision for ventilation except through the hatchways, which are closed in storms.

Thirty or forty ships have been sent to sea with cargoes of patent

fuel and small coal, which are both subject to spontaneous combustion; and patent fuel produces fever.

Government emigration is conducted by Commissioners, who expend the money received for the sale and rent of wild land in Australia in sending out the class of emigrants who are most agreeable to the squatters. Ignorant, humble, able-bodied young agricultural labourers, with as few children as possible, and as many single men as possible, were once the favourite qualifications; but the attraction of the gold-diggings has changed the prayer of the pastoral interest, and they now beg for aged parents with long families. The golden magnet has at length awakened the selfish to the advantage of domestic virtues and family colonization.

If it were likely that these land funds would much longer be entrusted to government commissioners, there are several questions which would be worth asking, as, for instance, whether it would not be as well that some financial statement were made in advance, at the beginning of each session, by the House of Commons' representative of the Colonial Office, specifying what sum had been spent in the past year, what number of emigrants had been sent, and from what districts, and at what cost per head for passage, and for expenses of management and collection, and what sum was in hand, with other such particulars as Chancellors of Exchequer and Commissioners of Poor Laws are in the habit of making. At present a neat printed report furnishes everything but useful information, and the result is dissatisfaction among the emigrating classes, and in the colony. It is a fact that, until the gold discovery offered an irresistible temptation, it was found easier to fill ships with working men who paid their passages, than to collect emigrants to accept the government free passage. The forms were insulting and the process degrading, the passage arrangements not fit for modest women.

It might also be well to inquire whether the interests of the mother country and the colony would not be better served by encouraging the emigration of an intelligent, educated class of labourers, who would as soon as possible become cultivators of the soil, than of mere agricultural machines ?—whether the class who rented the pastures of Australia had any right to dictate how that rent should be expended?

But it cannot be long needful to discuss these points. The management of the fund derived from the sale and rent of land in the three colonies must shortly be given up to the control of their respective legislative councils. These councils will soon find that there is no longer any need to import pairs of pauper labourers. Australia

COLONIZING COMPANIES A FAILURE.

259

now holds out sufficient rewards to induce the working class of this country to emigrate on their own resources, as the Irish do to America. The land fund may be much more profitably spent on internal improvements, roads, bridges, tanks, railway guarantees.

The moment that pauper emigration is abolished free emigration will increase; for free passages have the same depressing effect on voluntary efforts that indiscriminate outdoor relief had on wages. Causes to which we will presently allude are operating to instruct the emigrating classes in the nature of accommodation they have a right to demand on board ship; but some more powerful instrument than isolated emigration will be needed to assist the emigrating classes to remove in labouring armies to the land of high wages. That instrument will be found in association, which has built canals and railways, and done millions of work in England which is supposed in other countries to require the strength of autocratic finance, and which now nourishes many hundred working-class benefit societies. Colonizing companies have been thoroughly tried, and have proved total failures. If they were ever useful they are now out of date. However vigorously they start they end in bankruptcy, or sink into mere absentee land-jobbing companies. If any are ever again permitted their term of power should be limited to four or five years. Wisdom in Europe is often a folly in a colony; and the great authority of the London world of art, science, literature, and politics, finds himself lost in the bush, where perhaps his gardener proves the better man.

To put emigration, as required by the pace of the day, on a workmanlike and statesmanlike footing, not only ability and colonial experience were needed, but sympathy with the emigrating classes. All schemes of emigration have hitherto been based either on the idea of getting rid of troublesome people, or on providing capitalists with cheap servants. To people Australia as rapidly as it needs to be peopled colonization must be planned for the benefit of the colonists themselves. All industrious persons willing and able to work must be permitted to go. Two sentences express the foundation of a sound system of emigration-" association," and "family colonization."

The class, and it will exist in all ages and in all ranks, who ostracised Aristides, because tired of hearing him called the Just, will here have to endure a few more words on the work done by Caroline Chisholm. But it would be as easy to honestly record prison reform without mentioning Howard, or negro emancipation without Clarkson and Wilberforce, as to say anything useful about coloniza

« AnteriorContinuar »