their steam engines wearily dragged across the plains. By Act of the Dominion Parliament one-fourth of the whole public domain in the North-west territories is devoted absolutely to free grants to: actual settlers, another fourth is held at their option for three years at one half the Government selling price, and the remaining one half is to be sold at prices varying from four shillings to one pound per acre. The free grant lands alone are nearly twice as extensive as the whole of England."

6

On the other hand, Mr. J. A. Blake, M.P., who has lately traversed: the expectant region, gives warning of difficulties that require attentive consideration in order that they may be overcome. The Colonial Government has already granted much of the good land near the intended line of railway, to settlers or speculators, desiring to make a profit on its assignment; and the Hudson's Bay Company still retain immense tracts of the most desirable portions of the province; while without drainage other parts would prove unworkable for profit. During the brief and brilliant summer, mosquitoes are said to be a plague, and sometimes the grasshopper is a burthen.' Throughout the long winter scarcity and dearness of fuel will continue to be felt as a serious drawback until the railway is completed, save in those districts where natural wood abounds: and these are often far between. For settlement in the less occupied prairies, stretching from Manitoba to Columbia, Mr. Blake puts the cost of outfit, habitation, living, and first year's farming, a good deal higher than that which Mr. Tuke calculates as sufficient in the country of the Red River. Early frosts which injure materially unhoused corn, and prairie fires whose devastations are well known, must not be forgotten in the calculation of casualties. Mr. Tuke, indeed, is confident that an emigrant used to farming with a hundred pounds in hand and a family partly grown up to help him in the manifold tasks of a settler's life, may secure an allotment of 160 acres; and provided he is wise enough not to go out too early in the year, plough too deep, which does not answer, and be content with garden culture and a moderate sowing of corn for the first season, he may easily put up a snug shanty and offices before winter, and be ready for extended cultivation when the spring returns. As regards the actual pressure which Parliament is asked to relieve in Ireland, there are yet three months and more during which measures of help and encouragement may be matured, in time to enable an active and industrious man to migrate with the price of his tenant-right, or with the realised value of his crops or dairy produce during the present season Nor are there wanting in Ulster and Leinster thrifty and keen tenants at will of absentee or spendthrift proprietors who, not knowing what is before them, and seeing no

'Paper read before the Colonial Institute, January 25, 1881.

provision available for their sturdy sons, might be induced with little argument and no coaxing to take themselves out of the agrarian trouble by which they are on all sides encompassed. Would it not be well worth while to throw the casting weight into every such wavering scale, were it only for the sake of the room it would afford and the abatement of ruinous competition it would cause? What signifies the loss, even if it be an ultimate loss, of the whole cost of transit, for such a man and his family to the central prairie of Canada, and of the office fees and charge for title of his farm there, if he lodges pound for pound before starting, as the best of pledges that he is no pauper or ne'er-do-weel, and therefore no unfit or undeserving colonist?

Of course it will be said, why should the imperial treasury be asked to help men who, if left to themselves, may possibly find their way out next year or the year after? As well might it be said, why run the risk of cold or getting wet by helping to put out a neighbouring fire when perhaps it may burn out of itself? A great country cannot afford a parsimonious rule of economy. When misfortunes come, no matter whence or how, the wisest and best course is to meet them by any means which does not throw the burthen on particular classes or districts to the exoneration of the rest of the community; not because public money ought to be spent lavishly on undeserving objects, but because the benefit done exceptionally to persons who have no individual claim is often a great and solid benefit to the whole realm. We pay millions annually to keen-witted contractors for building us floating towers of hideous aspect and of murderous might; and, if no naval war ensues, nobody gains by the outlay but those who design and equip our ironclads. But if the fact that we have not shrunk from the cost averts a naval war, have we not after all the best of the bargain? Far more so if by a temporary and limited expenditure we help to quench the hazard of a servile war, and at the same time help to strengthen and ensure a noble appanage of empire that yearns for such reinforcement? The colonies do not always need or bid for the same sort of settlers; and we are bound at all times to have regard to their feelings in this respect, and even to their passing prejudices. New Zealand, for example, is said just now to be disposed to deprecate any stimulation of the ordinary movement thither, which has been somewhat checked from causes which need not be examined here. Then be it so, and let us not incur for a moment the reproach of trying to shift a portion of our burthen upon her. Ten years ago, when the standing garrison was recalled before the Maories had finally subsided into peaceful neighbourship, the Home Government was urged to advance a million sterling to encourage emigration; and at first the accommodation was refused. But appeals in Parliament and in the press on behalf of New Zealand after a while prevailed; and no one in his senses would say now that Lord Granville (then Colonial Secretary) committed a

mistake in yielding, although in the change of times another decade finds New Zealand in a different case, and in another mood. There is one rule, however, which never seems to vary. No colony will submit patiently to be saddled with a worn-out, sickly, or pauperised crowd, who cannot get work in our towns, or make a living by agriculture here. British colonists have not quitted home in former years, and spent their prime amid the perils and privations of the wilderness, to have their evening spoiled and the morning of their children overcast by the penury and misery our negligence has suffered to accumulate in our great towns or forlorn seaboards. It is no use arguing about the matter. The colonies have now local selfgovernment, magnetic intelligence, and a free press; and they won't be put upon in this way. If, therefore, we invite them to contribute towards the acceleration of a transfer of residence, whether urban or agricultural, it must be conditional on the artisan or husbandman giving some proof that he is worth helping. And this was the reason why the advocates of assisted emigration in a former parliament fearlessly provoked the shortsighted objection of those who penuriously pleaded that the central treasury ought not to contribute in passage money or settlement fees, for persons who might possibly manage to do without it. But there is no reason why various classes of agriculturists should not have the benefit of the contributory system. In our children's colonial house there are many mansions, and room for many small as well as large denizens; and if the system of associated emigration of neighbours and relatives from the same locality were once recognised and organised on a proper footing, there is no cause to doubt that the authorities of Manitoba or of Australia would adapt their regulations so as to accommodate, at all events by way of experiment, the sort of families who would be most willing probably to move from Ireland at the present time. The example of what has been done in the contiguous States of the Union to provide comfortable, though humble, homes for people of this description, cannot have been lost on the emulous authorities on the northern side of the border. With a paramount aim of getting the great Domirion railway completed as rapidly as possible Canada will not throw difficulties in the way, we may be sure, of replanting each side of the line with stout and active settlers, though some bring thither less ready money than others of their countrymen are

able to do.

Left to itself the efflux of population drifts naturally in the easiest channels, no general thought being apparently taken of consequences to the empire, immediate or essential. Of 41,296 who quitted Ireland in 1879, no less than 30,058 went to the United States; while only 8,198 sought homes in the Polynesian group, and but 2,317 in Canada. I have reason to believe that the returns for 1880 will prove still more suggestive; showing that in the past year 166,570 persons

of British or Irish birth emigrated to the United States, and 60,972 to other places. What a commentary on the doctrine of leaving everything to find its own level! Our nearest and greatest sister realms beyond sea which lack population the most for every purpose, and which for every reason we should most earnestly desire to see replenished with men of our own race, are stinted and starved, while our jealous rivals in manufactures and trade absorb seventy-two per cent. of the whole.2

The ascendency of the working classes in Victoria, since the concession of universal suffrage, and their persuasion that profitable manufactures and trades of every kind can be best promoted by rigorously limiting the competition of sea-borne goods and hands, has for some years practically caused Melbourne to be omitted in the calculations of intending emigrants. The nobler policy of New South Wales has, on the other hand, adhered steadily to the principles of free trade and free competition in labour; and Sydney welcomes to her splendid and ever-growing marts the products of European and American industry, and the willing worker from every clime and realm, and of every race and creed. There are already settled in this most hospitable and happy State a considerable number of Irish by descent or birth, who assimilate well with other portions of the popu lation, and unnoticeably contribute to that social fusion; it is the best antidote to any recurrence of the political confusion and conflict that still afflict their mother-land. The Legislature, though democratically chosen, has never shown the jealousy betrayed by her ambitious neighbour and rival in the disposal of land or the employment of skill. From time to time considerable assistance has been offered to the better class of emigrants from the old country in order to keep pace with growing wants and new developments of industry. Whether these inducements will continue to be held out, having regard to the facilities which exist for a constant immigration from China, time alone can tell. But there are younger States on the Southern Main which still need aids to colonisation, and which, if liberally and wisely dealt with by the Imperial Government, would doubtless see their advantage in accelerating the advent of new settlers from Ulster, if not from Connaught. If the atmosphere is not as humid or the weather as variable as that of Ireland, fevers, coughs, and rheumatic affections are proportionately rare; and as farms of every size, from twenty to eighty acres and upwards, are to be had in perpetuity under the excellent laws of simple transfer and sale originally devised by the late member for Cambridge, when Minister for South Australia, at less than one year's rent at home, the opportunity seems to be within our reach for settling half the perplexities of the land question in Ireland. W. M.TORRENS.

2 Emigration Returns, by Board of Trade, February 10, 1880.

THE BASUTOS AND SIR BARTLE FRERE.

'The circumstances under which the Basutos became subjects of the Crown are peculiar, and impose upon Her Majesty's Government a special responsibility for their welfare.-The Earl of Kimberley.

THE history of the Basutos has certainly been a sad one. As to that there will be no dispute. They had a time of rapid improvement and much prosperity, and now they are being driven back into barbarism by men who call themselves civilised. They asked for the means of developing their nation in security under the Government of the Queen, and so long as faith was kept with them they prospered. They showed a most loyal and friendly feeling towards the Queen and the Government, even during the deepest crisis of the Zulu war, and their reward is that they are being massacred by white troops, because they are said to be in rebellion' against the same Government. It is a remarkable change, and its causes are well worth considering.

In the January number of this Review there is an article by the late Governor of the Cape, which sets forth the history of this simple people in terms so misleading, that I am desirous to call attention to the real facts of this sad story-a story, as I think, rarely surpassed in the gloomy annals of misrule.

It is needless to refer to the obscure history of the formation of this tribe. Suffice it to say that, after many disputes with their neighbours, in 1869 they requested Sir P. Wodehouse to accept them as subjects of the Crown. He did this, he tells us (Times, December 23, 1880), after a full and free discussion with all the leading members of the tribe,' and he adds that 'it was distinctly agreed that they should not form part of the Cape Colony, but that British authority should be exercised over them by the Governor of the Cape in his capacity of High Commissioner.'

The next date is 1871, when, under Sir H. Barkly, the Basutos were annexed to the Cape Colony, but, as Sir P. Wodehouse believes, without consultation with the tribe.'

By the Act of 1871 it was provided that the power of making, repealing, amending and altering laws and regulations for the Government of Basutoland should be vested in the Governor, and