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1841 Mr. Lefevre succeeded Colonel Torrens as an unpaid member. In 1846 Mr. Lefevre retired, but in the same year a third paid member was appointed, and the duty of reporting on Colonial Laws, which had hitherto been performed at the Colonial Office, was transferred to the Commissioners.
The duties of the Commissioners, as expressed in their title, were :--
(1) To consider and report on Colonial Laws and questions relating to Colonial lands referred to them by the Secretary of State, and, under his instructions, to prepare and execute, on behalf of the Crown, guano and other licenses or leases and to receive the rents and royalties payable thereunder.
(2) To deal with all matters relating to emigration. Under this head was in- cluded the collection and preparation of emigration statistics, the administration of the Passengers Acts in this country, the suggestion and preparation of amend- ments when necessary, the reporting on all Colonial Acts and Ordinances relating to immigration, the superintendence of the emigration from India and elsewhere to the British labour-importing Colonies and of the treatment of the immigrants in those Colonies, and the consideration of and reporting on all questions connected with emigration schemes, whether for British emigrants or others, such as the Polynesian inter-insular emigration.
(3) To diffuse information respecting the British Colonies so far as related to matters connected with their settlement. The duty of reporting on questions relating to land involved in former years a large amount of labour. It embraced all questions of claims arising out of promises made, or expectations held out,
or regulations established years ago at a
time when land in the Colonies was of very little value, and the mode of dis- posing of it was very wasteful and irregular. The great value which it afterwards acquired brought forward claims which would otherwise never have been heard of, and the same circumstance, while it stimulated the pertinacity of claimants, made a severe scrutiny of their pretensions the more necessary.
As regards the second branch of the business relating to emigration it consisted--
(1) In the administration of the Passengers Acts, which applied to all emigration from the United Kingdom.
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(2) In the collection and dispatch of emigrants
to the Colonies.
(3) In the conduct of the immigration from
various quarters into the West Indies.
In regard to general emigration the duties of the Board were to see that the Passengers Acts were fully carried into effect. Secondly, the duty of the Office as regards the Australian Colonies was to expend in the dispatch of certain specified classes of immigrants such funds as the Colonies from time to time sent home. The performance of this duty was subject to causes of disturbance of an unusual and per- plexing nature, arising from the uncertainty as to the amount of funds which were sent home, and as to the price of freights, as well as from variations in the disposition of the labouring classes at home to emigrate. The amount of funds sent home depended on the extent of land sales in the Colony and the number of emigrants that were sent out the price with the proceeds depended on
of freight from this country, but as the Board on
the one hand did not know the rate at which land sales were going on in the Colony, nor the Colonial Authorities the were being rate at which their remittances exhausted in this country, gaps continually occurred between the expenditure of one remit- The con- tance and the arrival of a fresh one. sequence was that a succession of startings and stoppings occurred which rendered it difficult to make any estimate of the average amount of the work to be performed. The fluctuations in the emigration business cannot be better illus- trated than by recording that while in March, 1849, the Commissioners were obliged to close their office against all fresh applications, there being nearly 10,000 in the office undisposed of, in the summer of 1851 they were unable with the utmost exertions to get enough emigrants to fill their ships, and while in July, 1852, they had upwards of 18,000 applicants on their books and their office doors daily besieged, they were obliged in July, 1855, to put on additional pressure to get the requisite number of emigrants.
In 1856 one Commissioner was abolished, and in 1874-75 the establishment comprised two com- missioners, assistant secretary, accountant, four clerks, and messenger. In consequence of the decreasing business it was decided not to fill up vacancies as they occurred and to abolish two clerkships. On the retirement of the last com- missioner in 1878, the remaining two clerks and messenger were transferred with the business to the Colonial Office. The emigration officers at the ports, costing £4,857 per annum, were handed over to the Board of Trade and charged to the Mercantile Marine Fund.
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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From 1847 to 1869, both inclusive, the Emigration Board dispatched 1,088 ships carry- ing 339,338 emigrants. The expense of the emigration was about £4,864,000 which, with the exception of about £523,000 paid by the emigrants or their friends in the Colonies was defrayed out of Colonial funds.