all back upon. Humanity
and prudence alike forbid that they should be left to perish in the
streets. The exigency of the case can manifestly be met only by an
expenditure of public funds.

[Sidenote: The charge should be borne by the mother-country.]

But by whom is this charge to be borne? You urge, that when the first
pressure is past, the province will derive, in various ways, advantage
from this immigration,--that the provincial administration, who
prescribe the measures of relief, have means, which the Imperial
authorities have not, of checking extravagance and waste; and you
conclude that their constituents ought to be saddled with at least a
portion of the expense. I readily admit the justice of the latter
branch of this argument, but I am disposed to question the force of
the former. The benefit which the province will derive from this
year's immigration is, at best, problematical; and it is certain that
they who are to profit by it would willingly have renounced it,
whatever it may be, on condition of being relieved from the evils by
which it has been attended. Of the gross number of immigrants who have
reached the province, many are already mouldering in their graves.
Among the survivors there are widows and orphans, and aged and
diseased persons, who will probably be for an indefinite period a
burden on Government or private charity. A large proportion of the
healthy and prosperous, who have availed themselves of the cheap route
of the St. Lawrence, will, I fears find their way to the Western
States, where land is procurable on more advantageous terms than in
Canada. To refer, therefore, to the 82,000 immigrants who have passed
into the States through New York, and been absorbed there without cost
to the mother-country, and to contrast this circumstance with the
heavy expense which has attended the admission of a smaller number
into Canada, is hardly just. In the first place, of the 82,000 who
went to New York, a much smaller proportion were sickly or destitute;
and, besides, by the laws of the state, ship-owners importing
immigrants are required to enter into bonds, which are forfeited when
any of the latter become chargeable on the public. These, and other
precautions yet more stringent, were enforced so soon as the character
of this year's immigration was ascertained, and