Quebec is beginning to manifest itself in the Upper Province, and
farmers are unwilling to hire even the healthy immigrants, because it
appears that since the warm weather set in, typhus has broken out in
many cases among those who were taken into service at the commencement
of the season, as being perfectly free from disease. I think it most
important that the Home Government should do all in their power by
enforcing the provisions of the Passengers' Act, and by causing these
facts to be widely circulated, to stem this tide of misery.

* * * * *

What is to be done? Private charity is exhausted. In a country where
pauperism as a normal condition of society is unknown, you have not
local rates for the relief of destitution to fall 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