PRICES OF PROVISIONS IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND. The following Return shows the Prices of the principal Articles of Provisions in the Australasian Colonies. Vegetables generally will be found somewhat dearer in Australia than in England, whilst many fruits are much cheaper. But if the downward tendency of wages should continue, until it falls to a level which involves a real degradation in the condition of the workman; if his position in the old country is conspicuously inferior to that in which he knows he will find himself on his removal to a British colony or to the United States, emigration surely is the alternative which prudence and enterprise recommend. The Registrar-General speaks in terms of the highest satisfaction of the overflow of our surplus population into the fruitful regions of America and the Antipodes. No part of the social changes of the last forty years is more satisfactory, both to the mother country and the colonial and foreign countries, than this voluntary emigration, undertaken by the free choice, and paid for out of the savings, of the emigrants themselves. The high wages in the colonies are due to the same causes which affect the labour market in the United States: they are governed by an economic law, concisely stated by the Registrar-General. The value of labour is greatest where there is the greatest facility for its profitable use, where there is a large area of fertile land unappropriated, and where all fertile land is not as yet fully cultivated and subject to the payment of rent.' It was mainly on colonisation and emigration that Mr. Mill relied as the effective remedy for the depressing influence on wages caused by overpopulation. But he hesitated to believe that even under the most enlightened arrangements a permanent stream of emigration could be kept up sufficient to take off, as in America, all that portion of the annual in Wages in colonies. acres. The acreage under wheat in the Australian colonies and the Cape of Good Hope was 1,056,871 acres in 1867, and 1,513,419 acres in 1875. The average returns of produce per acre in New Zealand in the years 1875 and 1876 were: Wheat, nearly 30 bushels; oats, 36 bushels; barley, 32 bushels; hay, 13 ton; potatoes, 47 tons. The advantage secured to the individual emigrant by his removal from an over-peopled country is sufficiently proved by the high wages paid in the colonies. The table of rates current in Australia, printed on pp. 274-7, is extracted from 'The Colonies' of January 1879. Far be it from me to urge our working men to quit their native land in a mere spirit of restlessness and discontent. Progress and material development will be secured, almost with certainty, by emigration; but the charms which belong to an ancient civilisation, the hallowed associations, the picturesqueness-these are the work of time, and are necessarily wanting in a new country: Across the gap made by our English hinds Far off the long-roofed church; the shepherd binds Down in the foss, the river-bed of old, That through long lapse of time has grown to be The little grassy valley that you see. Rest here awhile. Not yet the eve is still, The bees are wandering yet, and you may hear The barley-mowers on the trenched hill, 1 Morris, 'Earthly Paradise.' But if the downward tendency of wages should continue, until it falls to a level which involves a real degradation in the condition of the workman; if his position in the old country is conspicuously inferior to that in which he knows he will find himself on his removal to a British colony or to the United States, emigration surely is the alternative which prudence and enterprise recommend. The Registrar-General speaks in terms of the highest satisfaction of the overflow of our surplus population into the fruitful regions of America and the Antipodes. No part of the social changes of the last forty years is more satisfactory, both to the mother country and the colonial and foreign countries, than this voluntary emigration, undertaken by the free choice, and paid for out of the savings, of the emigrants themselves. The high wages in the colonies are due to the same causes which affect the labour market in the United States: they are governed by an economic law, concisely stated by the Registrar-General. The value of labour is greatest where there is the greatest facility for its profitable use, where there is a large area of fertile land unappropriated, and where all fertile land is not as yet fully cultivated and subject to the payment of rent.' It was mainly on colonisation and emigration that Mr. Mill relied as the effective remedy for the depressing influence on wages caused by overpopulation. But he hesitated to believe that even under the most enlightened arrangements a permanent stream of emigration could be kept up sufficient to take off, as in America, all that portion of the annual in Value of colonies. crease, when proceeding at its greatest rapidity, which, being in excess of the progress made during the same short period in the arts of life, tends to render living more difficult for every averagely situated individual in the community.' Since the publication of Mr. Mill's treatise, more than thirty years ago, the facilities of communication with the colonies have been multiplied to a degree of which at that date no conception could have been formed. A journey to Canada, or even Australia, can now be made for a sum but slightly exceeding what it then cost to convey a traveller from New York to the Western prairies. Writing more than a generation ago, when our colonies were in their infancy, and there was nothing to indicate the prospective growth on which we may now venture to rely, Mr. Porter opened the chapter on Colonies in his 'Progress of the Nation,' with these glowing words: If called upon to declare that circumstance in the condition of England which, more than all other things, makes her the envy of surrounding nations, it would be to her colonial possessions that we must attribute that feeling. In the eyes of foreigners, those possessions are at once the evidence of our power and the surest indicant of its increase.' British capitalists seeking investment for their resources will best promote their own interests, and, what is far more important, the interests of the country, by judiciously fostering colonial enterprise. The promoters of railways in the United States offer the temptations of high rates of interest, and the capital |