II - IMMIGRATION

Summary

NEW SOUTH WALES

The system of allowing persons resident in New South Wales the privilege of nominating friends in the United Kingdom for an assisted passage, which had been adopted towards the close of the preceding period, was in full operation in 1861, but it was thought that if the conditions of life and settlement in the colony were made widely known in England, a large number of desirable persons might be induced to go out to the colony, at their own expense. Following out this idea, Henry Parkes and William Bede Dalley were commissioned to lecture in the United Kingdom on the advantages which New South Wales offered to settlers. They arrived in England in the summer of 1861, and during the latter part of that year and part of 1862 lectured in most of the important towns of England and Scotland, giving information as to the prospects which New South Wales offered to artisans and agricultural workers and to persons of capital, dwelling especially on the opportunities for acquiring freehold farms which the new Lands Act offered to persons of small means. Their lectures were usually well attended, and they succeeded in rousing considerable interest in the colony, but otherwise there was very little practical result from the mission. The working men who came to listen were unable to pay the passage-money required, and the lecturers had no funds whatever to help them.