At a Meeting of intending Shareholders, held at Perth, on the 24th of August 1839, Patrick Matthew in the Chair, the following Prospectus of the Scots New Zealand Land Company, moved by William Gorrie, and seconded by William Taylor, was unanimously agreed to, and ordered to be published, the principal portion of the same having previously been examined and approved of by intending Shareholders in various parts of Scotland.
REASONS FOR EMIGRATING.
1st, Because a new country, free of debt and ancient encumbrances, with a plentiful supply of virgin soil at a low price, under all the advantages of modern science and art, affords a superior field for human industry, higher wages for labour, and greater returns upon capital, and also more healthful occupation, than an old densely-peopled country, where all the land is already appropriated, cultivated, and high-priced,—where capital is rendered comparatively unproductive, science in a great degree unavailing, and industry is crushed to the earth by a load of public debt, and where a great portion of the population follow unwholesome occupations, shut up from the fresh air of heaven.
2d, Because, in a new country, free of slavery, almost every man is a holder of property,—deriving an income at the same time from property and from labour, a state of things propitious to liberty, and where a family of children is of the utmost value in assisting their parents (the happiest condition of human existence, alike favourable to the development of mind and body, and increase of population); whereas in an old country, at least in Britain, the many are entirely dependent for support upon labour-hire alone, and a family in too many cases the entailment of misery and starvation.
3d, Because, in the case of small capitalists, or middle-class men of circumscribed income having families, to remain in this country, is merely to sacrifice their children to their own selfish love of present ease, and cowardly vis inertiæ,—it being the lot of the greater portion of their children here to sink prematurely under the wasting confinement and miserable prospects of the counting-house clerk and shopman, and the small portion of them who may survive, and struggle up to a condition to support a family, are for the most part become diseased or aged,—finely illustrating the working of the destructive and preventive Malthusian checks, the admiration of certain political economists.[1]
4th, Because, in the present peculiar condition of Britain, great capitalists are enabled to undersell small capitalists, rendering it a matter of necessity for small capitalists to emigrate, or to sink to the condition of hired labourers.
REASONS FOR PREFERRING NEW ZEALAND TO EVERY OTHER EMIGRATION FIELD, AND FOR FORMING A SCOTS NEW ZEALAND COMPANY.
The climate of New Zealand is more temperate than that of any other country, and pre-eminently healthy. The soil is rich, and the supply of rain being regular, capable of producing all the grain and fruits of Europe in great perfection,—potatoes two crops in the year, good pasture at all seasons, and wool much superior to that of Australia. New Zealand is, besides, most advantageously situated for obtaining a market by disposing of its produce to the numerous South Sea whaling vessels which frequent its shores, and in supplying the wants of Australia at all times, but especially during the terrible visitations of drought and injuries by blight, to which that great island is so liable,—natural disadvantages which will limit Australia, at least for a long period, to a grazing country, rendering it more profitable to import agricultural produce from New Zealand than raise it at home.