The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Saturday, July 28, 1888. THREATENED PAUPER INUNDATION.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 175, 28 July 1888, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Saturday, July 28, 1888. THREATENED PAUPER INUNDATION.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s, and truth’s.

The Australian colonies are arousing themselves to a sense of the danger which threatens them in the rumored intention of the English Government to foist a large proportion of its pauper element on the colonies. The agitation against the threatened Chinese invasion is so fresh in our minds that it is difficult to avoid reference to it in the consideration of the new danger. One advantage, but a considerable one, there would be in a moderate influx of Chinese as against paupers of the Caucasian race would be that the former would at any rate never be a burden on their fellows. They would make havoc in the labor market, and would propagate those diseases and vices which seem inseparable from their habitations, but it might be easier to find remedies for these troubles than it would be to cope with the disastrous results that would follow upon the swamping of the colonies with the dregs of English society—vamping up the lowest of the low and deluging the colonies with them. With regard to the Chinese the people have always got a trump card which, if necessity arises, may be played, by absolutely refusing to deal with them, and were this course pursued it would have a powerful effect, though it would be of no avail did the Chinese themselves once become masters of the situation. But there is no ridding ourselves of the criminal parasites that may be forced upon us by this system of pauper immigration, It is no sin to be poor, but by the proposed scheme we may fear that it will be availed of by a very different class to the industrious, honest man which we read of in the “ Cotters Saturday night.” The danger is not that the already overstocked labor market will be swamped, but that a loafing, good-for-nothing element will be introduced, that those who now find it hard enough to obtain sustenance for themselves will be still fmther burdened by the maintenance of poor houses for a multitude of shammers who can but will not work, that our gaols will be filled with criminals who look upon them as a mere refuge; in short that our whole fabric of society will be polluted by the most degraded class that exists in the dark slums of the large cities of England. If we could be assured that none but those whose only “ sin ” is their poorness, well might the colonies do their best to try and accommodate such people and place them on a more comfortable footing than the most industrious can otherwise hope to attain witfi the rotten state of things that prevails in the cities of England. Mr McGregor’s report conveys an ominous warning as to the results which follow indiscriminate mmigration, one fact elucidated being hat since the immigration system was in vogue a few years ago two families who were allowed to make use of it have cost the colony £3,817.