428 SPECIAL SETTLEMENTS. the further prosecution of that systematic colonisation which she saw inaugurated at Wellington, she now offers to the promoters and founders of any Special Settlement, a certain legislative advantage which, I think, would prove singularly attractive to them. I allude to the "New Provinces Act," an act of the General Assembly under which any district in New Zealand possessing a port of entry, 500,000 acres of land, and 1000 inhabitants, may be raised into a separate independent province, to be governed, locally, by its own elected Provincial Council, like Auckland, Wellington, Taranaki, Hawke's Bay, Nelson, Marlborough, Canterbury, and Otago.* Looking at the growing desire now manifested by our middle classes to carry their small capitals and large families to some new, and more roomy, and untaxed Land, I cannot but think that if the various considerations touched on here were brought home to the eminent ministers and laymen of our various religious bodies, the result might be that we should soon see steps taken to lay the foundation in New Zealand of various little "Special Settlements"-Settlements the planning and the planting of which would be a high and good enterprise for ministers or laymen to engage in here, and which might offer a happy home and a successful career to hundreds of their co-religionists who might be the Settlements' first Pioneers. Between the formal planting of the "layers,” (the Special Settlements,) alluded to by Archbishop Whately, and the mere throwing down of his "twigs and leaves" (the isolated, haphazard sort of emigration,) there is, however, a process of colonising which I would fain see more generally adopted, and which I shall name " Group Emigration" that is the emigration of little private bodies of three or four, or half a dozen, or a * I should regard a province of this capacity as amply large enough for the planting and growth of such a special Settlement as I have in view; for the Special or Denominational Settlements which I would use as a means of colonising New Zealand would be planned on a much smaller, and more modest scale than that adopted by Canterbury and Otago. For the purposes of Special Settlements, Canterbury and Otago are much too large; and, before long, we shall probably see them both cut up and par titioned off into two or three provinces: their very size, their monopoly of territory, inviting partition; or, as they would probably term it," spoliation." FAMILY GROUP EMIGRATION. 429 dozen or more families who, taking with them two or three or half a dozen good labourer's families, on the terms recommended in my Appendix to the New Zealand Handbook, would make the voyage together, purchase their wild land in a block, and then settle down on it, each on their own acres, as a little community of friends, neighbours, and fellow-labourers, mutually aiding and encouraging each other in the work of subdueing the wilderness, speeding the plough, stocking the farm, improving the homestead, and creating the little estate. "Group emigration" of this character has occasionally been practised with the happiest results in many colonies. In New Zealand, in the province of Auckland, it has been most wisely encouraged by a certain provision in the Land Regulations; and Auckland already exhibits various thriving little "group emigrant" communities-some, consisting of two or three considerable bodies of settlers who have re-emigrated from Canada and Nova Scotia, and who are now located in the beautiful district of Wangarei; others, of a body of families proceeding out from the Isle of Man; and others, again, of a group of Lincolnshire families, who have planted themselves down near the fine harbour of Monganni, in the country around Doubtless Bay. Indeed, so many and so great are the advantages of this group emigration of families over the isolated emigration of the individual, that nothing in my experience of colonisation has caused me greater surprise and regret than that this " "group emigration" is not far more generally practised than it is. There is not, I think, any one position in life in which a man might find himself placed where he would profit so much by the fact of "union being strength" as he would were he about to emigrate to some new Land. If two families, A and B, were to proceed to New Zealand to-morrow-A going out alone in the usual solitary, haphazard manner, B allying themselves to three or four fellow-families on the group system-I believe that at the expiration of the fifth year, if notes were compared, mutual experiences related, and a balance struck, it would be found that family B had obtained a return for the capital and labour they had employed better by twenty per cent. than the return obtained by family A; and that they 430 FAMILY GROUP EMIGRATION. had suffered one half less than A had done from those many doubts, anxieties, difficulties, and disagreeables which are inseparable from the work of first settling down to a new pursuit in a new land. Three or four, or half a dozen, families emigrating to New Zealand in a little group, begin to command advantages over the solitary emigrant from the day they apply for passage; and they retain these advantages over him in each and every step of the enterprise, until, and long after, they actually find themselves settled down on their own acres in the new land. Let us glance at a few of them. Deputing two or three of their body to act as managers, and going into the shipping market with perhaps 2000l. or 3000l. to spend where they like in passage money and freight, they make sure of securing a firstclass ship, command the pick of the cabins, and pocket the handsome sum which, as wholesale customers, would be allowed them by any ship-broker in a reduction of passage money. In the equally important matter of outfit and equipment, not only do certain similar advantages attend them, but they have one or two great additional advantages to count on, which are these: when a single family of the small-capitalist class goes to New Zealand with a view of buying land and creating a little estate, there are certain implements, or machines, or seeds, or live stock, or other things, which they would like to take; but which, as the article or articles would cost a considerable could only be looked on as articles to be used or employed wholly and solely by themselves, they do not venture to take. Now, in a group of families" this difficulty either does not arise at all, or it arises in a less degree: a little counsel is called on the Outfit Question, and it is decided that A of the group shall take, say, a thrashing-machine, B a saw-mill, C some extra strong ploughs, D half a score of choice breeding sheep, E a hundred pounds-worth of grass seed, F a good family waggonette; and when the group gets on its block of land, A sells or lends B the use of something he has brought, and B does the same by C and D. 66 sum, and The Group maintain their superiority of position on the voyage: a surly, disagreeable, domineering captain might illtreat or annoy the poor Browns, unprotected and alone-but if poor Browns be banded with stout Smiths, robust Robinsons, FAMILY GROUP EMIGRATION. 431 clever Clarkes, legal Lloyds, and the like, a rude, unmannerly captain would think twice ere he wilfully cut Brown a bad slice, kissed Miss Ada, or jostled Brown off the poop. The Group lands, and they still retain their advantages over the Individual. As an organised little body, well armed for the work before them, they create a sensation and command respect the moment they set foot ashore: they have done the little Settlement the honour of choosing it as their future home in preference to a dozen other Settlements, and popularity, and a hearty welcome await them at every turn. They stow away their heavy baggage on the wharf, and house themselves in suburban cottages or lodgings for a few weeks.* A day or two after they are thus temporarily housed, the heads of the families, or some little "land-buying" committee they may elect, proceed to the land office-the Land Commissioner, the Chief Surveyor, the First Clerk, the Second Clerk, each and every official with whom they came in contact, would feel interested in such a party, and would offer them every facility in the work of selecting a really good block of land. The land selected and divided, and each head of a family having his crown title for his particular lot in his pocket, the party knock up their make-shift cottages, and by degrees move on to the land-men and lads going first, mammas and Adas following with the babies. They are now planted down to their work, and, grouped as they are, they will for a time find it hard work to turn the rugged waste into a cluster of blooming farms. But here, in the actual work of reclamation and cultivation, they will still enjoy a hundred advantages over the single family who have emigrated in the haphazard style, and who have sat down before the bush solitary and alone. The Group (a little community of neighbour families, often, probably, intermarrying and having society within themselves) is far better armed with outfit weapons for the fight before it than the single family. It can combine forces, too, for the making of some branch road, the felling of some piece of *Any few good labourers the "Group" might have brought with them could always get employment in the town or neighbourhood for a week or two until they were wanted on the land. 432 FAMILY GROUP EMIGRATION. forest, the gathering in of some crop, and, united, can accomplish a dozen improvements in the rising farms where the single family can accomplish one. Such a Group, too, joined as it often would be by friends and relatives from the mother country, might soon grow large enough to form a little "Special Settlement" of its own, to possess itself of certain political power, and, sending its member to the Provincial Council, take care that in the expenditure of public money on roadmaking, steam communication, postal arrangements, and public works, the Settlement received its fair share of the public purse. The only reason I can imagine why a description of emigration so replete with advantages as "Family group emigration” is not more generally practised, is this-namely, that when a family of the small-capitalist class is about to emigrate they are either utterly ignorant of the vast superiority of group emigration, or, if they have ever heard of it, they languidly fancy that it would be impossible to find any other families whom they would like to join, or who would like to join them. Here, however, I would observe that nothing valuable is to be had without we take some trouble to have it; and there would often, I dare say, be some difficulty experienced in getting together three or four or half a dozen families to form an "emigrant group" such as I have sketched. But, in saying this, I would also say that, looking to the growing desire of our middle-class families to emigrate, and to the increasing popularity of the South Island of New Zealand as an emigration field, I have no doubt that if any energetic family now looking to New Zealand, and duly impressed with the advantages of "group emigration," were to go heartily to work to beat up for recruits they would soon find some. happens in a circle of friends, when emigration is discussed, that one family says, "I will go if you will go;" and if where there was such ground to start on these two families would both seek about for others among their friends' friends, and just advertise once or twice in the Times, and in two or three good country papers, stating, in half a dozen lines, their views, I believe that in the great majority of cases a group party" could be got together in three months after the attempt was commenced. One or two families of retired officers, joined with one or two active agriculturists, a country curate, and surgeon, and one or two It often |