Sir CHARLES NICHOLSON considered every one present would admit that the great and pressing want felt in English society was an opening for the enormous increase of the population. It was a serious question, and would have to be dealt with sooner or later in a wise and statesmanlike manner. The only question to be settled was the best means of at the same time providing for the wants of the colonies and relieving the mother country of her surplusage population. The Australian colonies had done their part, for already they had expended upwards of six millions sterling in emigration purposes, and the people of Queensland had adopted a system which was tending largely to develop the internal resources of that country. He, however, could not give his entire assent to the scheme of colonization as proposed by Sir William Denison, the details of which had been so admirably marked out in his Paper. The great fault in the scheme was that portion which threw upon the Government the onus of finding employment for the labourers on their arrival. It proposed also to establish a large fund, the expenditure of which would be liable to great abuse from the great amount of patronage it would place in the hands of one or two individuals. Attention had been called to the fact that so many Irish and Scotch emigrants went out to various colonies; he believed the explanation would be found in the fact that the lower orders of Scotch and Irish were much better educated in the parochial and national schools, and consequently much better informed as to the markets where their labour may be in demand than the lower orders of English. The Poor Law Board did not rightly understand this great question. The very measures they took were paltry and inefficient; but when the time came, and the time surely would come, when the administration of the whole of the Poor Law Boards of England would be vested in one central organization, then some real practical scheme would be adopted which would relieve this country of her surplus population, supply the crying wants of the colonies, and thus benefit both. Mr. FREDERICK YOUNG did not have the pleasure of listening to the Paper of Sir William Denison, but he had carefully read it over since, and having listened most attentively to the discussions to which it had given rise, he could not help thinking that they had travelled out of the record because they had been invited to discuss the point whether it was desirable or not that State aid should be given to emigration, and, so far as he had been able to gather, very little had been said upon that subject. It was a question whether it should be taken up by the Imperial Government or by the Govern ments of the colonies, and he thought that up to the present moment they had only been touching the extreme boundaries of that great question. It had been truly said that the population of this island doubled itself whilst the island grew no larger; there was only the same land to be tilled, and the same acreage to bring forth fruits, and it therefore became a question for statesmen to consider how to provide for the wants of this very increasing population. There were waste lands, and it was the duty of Government to find out some system by which the land and the people could be married together. It was a question which could not be left in its present state, and it was useless to discuss the details of any plan where no great plan had been generally received and adopted. It had been said that the waste lands would not pay for cultivation, and that made the question the more imperative how people were to be put upon land which would pay for cultivation, and which would give them fruit for their labour; and he considered that the views which Sir William Denison had put forward and the scheme, the details of which he had so carefully elaborated, was the one which was most likely-all things considered-to become successful and be adopted. He did not approve entirely of every little detail, but taken as a whole it was masterful and good. Captain GOODLIFFE moved the adjournment of the debate. Mr. DOUGLAS said he came to the meeting as a listener, and would not have spoken unless he had been called upon specially, as he was asked to make some remarks having especial reference to Australia. Attention had been called to the fact that 250,000 people were passing over the Atlantic, the greater proportion of which went to America, and he could assure the assembly that the people in Australia were looking upon that fact with a somewhat envious eye, because they wished to have something like a fair proportion of the emigrants to which they considered themselves entitled. If they got something like ten per cent. of the people who went to America, Australia would be in a position to approach the subject of paying passage-money on something like an equal footing, which at the present moment they were not, for the difference of passage-money being so great, and the difficulty the workmen had in saving sufficient, rendered it impossible for the Australian colonies to get their proportion of English labourers unless some scheme was propounded which would give the intending emigrant a little assistance. To some extent the difficulty had been overcome, and the Australian Government had voted large sums of money to assist workmen who desired to go out, and no less than 400,000 people had been sent out, and principally by the grants made by Colonial Governments. Those people would not have been able to go but for the funds placed at the disposal of Emigration Commissioners in this country; but those funds would soon be exhausted, and it remained to be seen whether money sufficient could be raised in this country. At one time Queensland offered great inducement, and the result was, especially in 1865, that from 10,000 to 12,000 emigrants a year were introduced annually; but that was rather more than the colony could readily absorb, and in any scheme which was carried out care should be taken to ascertain the wants of the colonists, and the number of people which each colony could take per annum without any over-straining. The discussion was then again adjourned to January 16th, 1871. MEETING held on Monday, January 16th, 1871. Adjourned discussion on Sir WILLIAM DENISON'S Paper on "Colonization." The Minutes of the previous meeting having been read, Lord NORMANBY called upon Captain GOODLIFFE, as the mover of the adjournment, to open the discussion. Captain GOODLIFFE then spoke as follows: It is a task fraught with much difficulty to resume the debate on a subject on which so much has been said by such high authorities, and with so much point and eloquence; the subject also is one of such deep, nay, incalculable importance, that one may almost shrink from attempting to grasp it. Not only is it so important, but it presents so many aspects, and bears incidentally on so many vital points in our social economy, that it is the more difficult to keep one's gaze steadily fixed on the main issue, which I take it is-"the duty of the Government in respect of emigration." The multiform aspect of this question is no doubt the reason that so many speakers of high ability have taken special, rather than general views, and have dwelt on points that have come more immediately under their notice; in fact, the subject, the more it is discussed, has a natural tendency to throw off separate points at a tangent, just as the rapid revolution of the grinder's wheel throws off its train of sparks. Still, we must come back to the wheel, or rather to its motive power. In discussing this, as, indeed, in reasoning on most questions affecting our social condition in which the agency of the Government is, or should be employed, the powers and functions of the Government are not unfrequently assumed, rather than proved. Some persons reason as though the Government was some mysterious agency, invariable and unfailing in its particular sphere, like heat or gravitation, and that when appealed to its operation must be as certain. Others, again, speak of the powers of Government as though it had some mysterious resource of unbounded means, and it had only to determine on a course of action to be enabled to carry it out. But in sober truth the Government now means 66 THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE," and, happily, more so now than at any former period of our history-a will which must be rapidly and increasingly developed, and which no statesmen can with impunity contravene; while the resources of the Government are, in one word-taxation. Thus does it become, on the one hand, increasingly important faith fully to instruct the public mind, and, on the other, so to evoke a sense of public responsibility that the people, knowing their duty, may not be deterred from fulfilling it by base and sordid views of monetary good or temporary self-sacrifice. I venture to think, with profound deference to so high an authority, that Sir Wm. Denison has approached this subject with too timorous a step. He has lingered at the threshold and hesitated to throw wide open the portal. He sees and knows the intense gravity of the subject, and would appear almost to doubt if the public gaze can bear the full stream of light of which he well knows the depth and brilliancy. Thus he has in his most able pamphlet rather touched on the needs and necessities of particular classes than the whole wants of the body politic. No man knows better than Sir William Denison the general ignorance that exists with reference to our colonial empire, and still more so, on the question of emigration, how few there are who know even the number of our colonies, and still fewer their distinctive characters. Colonies are spoken of in general terms as though they all had the same value, or as though that value could be appraised by arithmetic. While some possessions are mainly important for military and strategical purposes, as Gibraltar, Malta, Bermuda, and partially, in this sense, the Cape; others, as, principally, Australia, Canada. and New Zealand, derive their infinite value as the homes of productive labour, where industry and thrift shall gather wealth and prosperity; where a man shall find his small capital-too small for good in the old country-rapidly augmented in the new; the man of science find large and practical scope for his genius and skill; nay, even the poor and destitute, those to whom the struggle for mere bread is a hard fight in our teeming cities, shall find the bounteous hand of nature has spread the "free breakfast table" for all who will work and eat; while to those who remain at home the value and importance of our colonies shall be made more manifest as they find them to be the great sources of supply of raw material—the great markets for the consumption of our industries. I start on the basis that the British Empire should not mean Great Britain and Ireland, but the whole of that dominion over which the British flag flies; on which it is said the sun never sets; and which has been so eloquently described by Dr. Webster— an empire next only to China in population and to Russia in area. Is then this heritage worth retaining? Is it to be the glory of the British Crown that, as she spreads the beneficent influence of her rule, every new district added is a fresh gem in the imperial diadem, and that as England extends her parental rule, making |