PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
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regard with favour expenditure which is not an absolute necessity, and which practically involves an increase of staff of the Colonial Office. "But when a request is put forward by the Commonwealth of Australia as indicating something which it regards as lacking in the Colonial Office, it behoves the Secretary of State to consider carefully how he might meet the request.
To begin with, there are only three parts of the Empire to be considered: Canada, Australasia, and South Africa. There are two ways in which such a request might be met:-
1. By allowing clerks in the Colonial Office, when they can be spared, to pay a visit to the Colonies with which they have been connected, say after ten years' total service and after five years' service in connection with those Colonies. They might be allowed up to six months' full pay leave and actual
expenses.
2. By attaching a member of the Colonial Office for a year or two to the staff of the Governor-General, secondling him for the purpose. This would be the more advantageous form of falling in with the idea expressed in the resolution. This course has already been followed in South Africa, where one clerk was private secretary to Lord Milner, two others became Imperial Secretary, i.e., Secretary to the High Commissioner, and another is now private secretary to Lord Selborne.
What has proved to be an unfortunate side of the arrangement is that two of these gentlemen have left the service of the Crown, and that consequently, from the point of view of that service, their valuable experience has been lost to the State. The Treasury might on this ground wish to make it a condition that any officer detached for service, or for a visit to the Colonies, should enter into a guarantee that he would repay any extra cost to the Treasury occasioned by his colonial employment if he leaves the service within five years after such employment.
Both these suggestions might be put forward to elicit the views of Mr. Deakin as to whether they would satisfy his object.
Plan 1 is one which can be followed by the Colonies themselves, pari passu, if they think proper.
Plan 2 is one which naturally does not admit of any similar appointment from the Colonies to Downing Street. The Colonies can attach men to the offices of their High Commissioners with the same object and result.
An interchange of officers between the Colonial Office and the self- governing Colonies does not appear to be practicable. In the future, as in the past, it will be possible to second Imperial Officers on special occasions, if their assistance is desired by Governments of the self-governing Colonies.
Colonial Office, April 1907.
No. II.
Emigration and the Colonial Conference.
The only Resolution bearing on Emigration is that sent in by Australia :-
"That
is desirable to encourage British emigrants to proceed to British Colonies rather than to foreign countries.
"That the Imperial Government be requested to co-operate with any Colonies desiring immigrants in assisting suitable persons to emigrate." It appears to be an answer to the Circular from the Colonial Office sending out the Report of Lord Tennyson's Committee [Cd. 2978], though it does not directly reply to it. Other answers to that circular are in print below. Except Natal, which is unfavourable, they all merely propose discussion.
The first part of the Resolution will no doubt be generally accepted. From the point of view of sentiment it appeals to all, and there are, as a matter of fact, better openings in the Colonies than exist outside the Empire, where the openinge consist mainly of North and South America (Chili and the Argentine). In the latter, language, customs, race, and religion are most serious obstacles to the ordinary emigrant. With regard to the former,
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although there are undoubtedly good openings in places, the Colonies with their great areas of unoccupied lands and the similarity of their institutions, especially the stability of their government, resting, as in this country, on a general respect for law, offer better openings. The following quotation is taken from the Report of the Einigrants' Information Office for 1906 :-
In consequence of the earthquake at San Francisco on 18th April and the activity in the building trades which resulted there, a movement for the emigration of men in the building trades from this country was started, and the Committee, after making inquiry, found it necessary to issue more than one public warning that although a demand for labour in the building trades existed at San Francisco, yet, owing to the conditions prevailing in the city, including the high prices, labour in the United Kingdom was really better reinunerated, and a large correspondence followed.
Attention was also drawn to the Southern States (Virginia, South Carolina, and others) and further information regarding them was collected. These States offer, in some cases, good openings to men with a little capital, but in considering their attractions as a field for emigration, it must be remembered that there is a considerable black population, which, although it is not equally distributed throughout them, and although may not at any given point be actually competing with white labour, must in many ways affect the country unfavourably and reader it unsuitable for settlement by the ordinary emigrant from this country without capital. The Committee have therefore informed inquirers that in their opinion these States do not as a rule offer as good openings as the British Colonies which possess a white population.
The second part of the Resolution is somewhat anbiguous, and is more debatable. If by "suitable" persons it means those persons whom the Colonies particularly wish to recruit, viz., the best men, and more particularly the agricultural population, the Resolution means that the settled policy of a generation, under which Parliament has never voted money to encourage emigration, and the recruiting of emigrants has been left entirely to the Colonial governments interested, is to be reversed. But in the words of Lord Tennyson's Committee, "in the present state of agriculture in England, it can hardly be seriously suggested that the Government should undertake large financial responsibilities in order to remove the more enterprising "labourers out of the country."
LL
The Resolution may, however, merely be an endorsement of the suggestions of Lord Tennyson's Committee. The report of that Committee should be carefully read; but its main recommendation (page 21) was a proposal that Parliament should be asked to vote money to committees under the Unemployed Workmen's Act for the purpose of emigration, the expenditure being supervised under the Secretary of State by the existing Emigrants' Information Office, expanded to meet the new requirements.
A further recommendation was that, if the first recommendations were rejected, Parliament should be asked to give an annual grant for the emigration of suitable persons, experimentally, for five years, The definition of "suitable," which the Committee regarded as limited to
persons taken from the cities of this country" (see terms of reference), would, no doubt, differ greatly from the Colonial definition.
LC
The exact machinery required need not be considered here, and must, indeed, to some extent depend on the exact scope of the work; but it does not, in any case present any insuperable practical difficulties if the principle is accepted. It appears, however, indispensable that the Government should decide before the Conference whether, or how far, they accept or reject the proposals of the Committee in their general outline. (The Committee, it will be seen, was not unanimous). Although it is important the Government should arrive at some decision, it is not of course necessary, or, perhaps, even desirable, to announce the decision until the Colonial Ministers have made clear their views. If they do not accept the proposals of the Report, it will be for them to make other proposals.
The importance of the Committee's recommendations lies mainly in the fact that it has been the policy of this country for many years not to vote money for the purpose of emigration, and the Committee recommend a departure from this. This departure would not, however, be nearly so great if the vote were merely a diversion of money to be voted for the general
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