Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2): or Settler and Maori in Northern New ZealandHay, W. Delisle (William Delisle)
History
Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2): or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand
Hay, W. Delisle (William Delisle)
Ethnology -- New Zealand; Māori (New Zealand people); New Zealand -- Description and travel
men you will probably have to associate with; don't be disconcerted at
that, just work on, and by-and-by you will get ahead of them. You will
meet plenty of nice gentlemanly fellows in any part of New Zealand, and
they will think all the better of you if you are earnestly and
energetically industrious. Lastly, don't run away with the notion that
you are going to jump into luck directly you land. Wages are high to the
right people, but you are not among those at the outset. You may be
satisfied if you do anything more than just earn your keep, for the
first six or twelve months."
I think that that is, upon the whole, pretty sound advice for the class
of men to whom it is addressed; but I will go further, and point out
what advantages the average middle-class "young gentleman" may
reasonably look forward to from emigration to New Zealand. In the first
place, he may expect to enjoy robust health, more perfect and enjoyable
than he could hope for if tied down to a counting-house stool in the
dingy atmosphere of a city. He will exchange the dull monotony of a
sedentary occupation in the chill and varying climate of Britain, for a
life of vigorous action in a land whose climate is simply superb. When
he gets through the briars that must necessarily be traversed at the
outset, he will find himself happier, freer from anxiety, and, on the
whole, doing better than he would be if he had remained at the old life.
He will "feel his life in every limb," and, remote from the world, know
naught of its cares. If he be anything of a man, before ten or a dozen
years are gone he will find himself with a bit of land and a house of
his own; he will be married, or able to marry, his earnings will suffice
for existence, while every pound saved and invested in property will be
growing, doubling, and quadrupling itself for his age and his children.
There is something to work for and hope for here: independence,
contentment, and competence. It is not a stern struggle from year's end
to year's end, with naught at the finish but a paltry pension,
dependence on others, or the workhouse. The gentleman-colonist we are
talking of is working for a _home_, and, long before his term of life
draws to its close, he will find himself, if not rich, at any rate, in
the possession of more comfort and happiness than he could hope for in
the old country.
I am not an emigration-tout, and have no interest in painting my picture
in too vivid colours, and in these remarks I have transgressed against
some of the ordinary colonial views on the subject; but I have done so
with intention, because I consider them not entirely in the right. The
colonist says--we don't want gentlemen here, we want MEN! But he forgets
that the unfortunate individual he disparages has often more real
manhood at bottom than the class below him. Therefore, the middle-class
emigrant must remember the qualities most required in him--pluck,
energy, and resolution.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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