PAUPER CHILDREN EMIGRATION BILL. (Hansard, 26 June 1852)

§ The EARL of SHAFTESBURY
presented to their Lordships a Bill, not for the purpose of having it now discussed, but for the purpose of having it printed now and circulated during the recess throughout the country and the Colonies. 1329 The object of the Bill was to enable parishes and boards of guardians to raise funds to meet contributions from Australia for the purpose of juvenile emigration. There were many advantages in this course both to the mother country and to the Colonies. It appeared by a return of a year ago that there were 52,000 children in the union houses of England and Wales; and it appeared equally by statements from Australia, that, were the whole number transplanted there, the Colonies would be like the daughters of the horse-leach, and would still cry, "Give, give." Here was the testimony of a churchwarden to the state and prospects of workhouse children:— The cost (he says) of maintaining and educating such children is at the rate of 3s. 6d. a week each. We cannot put them out to sevice till they are 14. They are soon returned upon our hands; the girls, in many cases, pregnant. They often marry at an early age, and beget a race of paupers. I am often shocked to recognise in our workhouse the same familiar faces, the said 'workhouse birds,' now fathers and mothers, whom I saw there as children twenty years ago. They know the law, they can tell how far they may safely go. They don't work, and yet they don't refuse to work; for they know that if they refuse they become liable to punishment. Captain Stanley Carr, an Australian gentleman of great experience, said, "The emigration of pauper children was preferable to that of adults." The noble Earl dwelt on the mischiefs resulting from the unnatural disparity of the sexes in the colonies, and showed that the evil could not be remedied merely by sending out adult women, not merely because their number was deficient, but because their characters were suspected, and inferred that girls should be sent out before the age to which the least suspicion could attach; and he proposed the experiment of establishing a small industrial school for girls in the colony with which he was himself connected; and of fitting them by an education of not less than a year to become useful servants and eligible wives. Let any man try the question by his own experience, and then pronounce. The Bill, being merely intended to stir the question, and to excite comment and observation, was necessarily imperfect. The proposition of it would, he was sure, be most favourably received in the Colonies, and, when understood, would, he doubted not, be equally acceptable to all who cared for the welfare of the rising generation, who would be alike benefited by it, both those who emigrated and those who remained.

§ The EARL of DERBY
said, he was not at all opposed to such a scheme as the Bill of the noble Earl was intended to bring into operation. No doubt it would be conducive to great advantage in the clearing of the poor-houses, and also in furnishing to the Colonies a supply of labour, of which there was great need; but more than that, it would rescue these unhappy children from a position in which continual poverty, and probably vice, would surround them, from both of which they would be relieved, by being transplanted to the Colonies. He wished to impress upon the noble Earl that he ought to be exceedingly cautious in dealing with this matter. He thought it was of the utmost importance that the greatest precautions should be taken as to the mode in which these children should be disposed of on their arrival in the Colonies, because several benevolent plans, founded on sound principles, had already been devised for the same object as that which his noble Friend had in view, but they had led, when put into execution, to results of a very painful description, and the public mind had thereby been much prejudiced against them. His only doubt as to the success of this measure was founded on the confession of the noble Earl himself, who had said that the Bill itself was "necessarily imperfect." If so, would it be wise to circulate it during the recess, and to allow the prejudices which might arise both in this country and in the Colonies from its errors to militate against it during that interval? He thought that the putting forward an imperfect scheme would tend to prejudice the benevolent project which the noble Earl had in view, and which he should rejoice to see brought into satisfactory operation.

The EARL of DESART
had only one remark to offer to their Lordships on this subject, and that arose out of a circumstance of which the noble Earl might not be aware—namely, that the Emigration Commissioners had declared that the emigration of children was always attended with difficulty. A voyage by sea was always attended with great mortality among the children; and that mortality generally spread in its progress among the adults. It was a knowledge of this fact that had induced the Commissioners not to allow more than a small number of children to embark in the emigrant ships, their object being to prevent the spread of disease to the adults on board those vessels.

§ The EARL of SHAFTESBURY
was well aware that children required on hoard of ship, as they did in private houses, a more liberal supply of oxygen than adults, and that from the want of such a supply a considerable degree of mortality had arisen among them; but under the new system and the greater care now adopted in the emigrant ships, there had been less sickness, and the amount of disease was not half as great as formerly. He thought that it would be advantageous, both at home and in the Colonies, that the poor should know that there was a scheme in agitation for the benefit of the pauper children themselves, and also for that of the Colonies.

§ The EARL of DERBY
would leave it entirely to the discretion of the noble Earl himself either to press his Bill on the House now, or to withdraw it, for the purpose of producing a better Bill in the next Session of Parliament.

§ The EARL of SHAFTESBURY
said, that, under all the circumstances, it would perhaps be better to withdraw the Bill for the present.