CO129-137 - Sir MacDonnell - 1869 [4-5] — Page 159

156

do o

2 or 3000

feasibility of annually obtaining eligible Emigrants from Hong Kong to the British West Indies

2

best attention to

I have given my best attention to this interesting subject, with every desire to assist in conveying a portion of the surplus labor here to the extensive field for its reproductive and useful employment which the British West India Colonies afford.

Nevertheless, the superior attractions of California, with its many allures in its own immediate neighborhood, must always command a preference from all intending Emigrants over the less inviting inducements of the West Indies, attainable moreover only after a comparatively tedious and uncomfortable voyage.

3.

A round sum of money, say $26, paid to healthy Emigrants here might procure some, but the majority of them would probably be men brought here in questionable manner by parties with whom they had agreed to share the bounty offered; and I am inclined to think that Emigration could only be managed by a gradual relaxation of the strictness and vigilance which, for the credit of the British Government, will, it is to be hoped, continue.

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for paragraphs. Spelling errors were corrected (e.g., "oktrining" to "obtaining", "supinier" to "superior", "lefs" to "less", "lep" to "less", "cemento" to "comfort", "reney" to "money", "mow" to "now", "mandunud" to "managed", "benuo" to "bounty", "www." was removed as it seems to be an OCR error). Extra spaces were removed, and missing spaces were added to correct spacing issues. The text was reordered to form coherent paragraphs. No translation was done, and file references were not present in the original text, so rule 10 was not applicable. The original page numbering ("156") was kept as it is, assuming it is part of the content or metadata. No comments or explanations were added to the text.