Page:The A. B. C. of Colonization.djvu/18

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carry this out, no person be received into the Society's list who is not a member of a group, unless in particular cases, where the Society may see fit to make exceptions, for I consider the honesty of the people the base, and the group system the key-stone of the Society.

In suggesting the Family Loan Society, one of the chief points sought is to raise the character and moral standard of the people, and I consider the group system as one of the elements that may be applied for attaining this object. I contemplate Colonization as what it may be, when every district may have its local committee or society that will afford information and procure protection for those that stand in need of it. I have commenced an elementary one in the "Emigrant's Home," next to my own residence, leaving it to time and means to complete what I cannot at once accomplish. Any thing in this way cannot be too simple and practical for the industrious, and working classes. I propose then to have arranged in a room original letters, when they can be procured, from emigrants. Colonial Papers, &c. I will then invite families and parsons anxious to emigrate to meet here on the evenings of the 1st and 3rd Saturday of every month, at 7 p.m. where they may quietly talk over the matter, peruse the various letters, papers, &c. laid before them, or hear them read and explained. In commencing this first. Group meeting, which will be on the 13th of April, I have been kindly promised the valuable assistance of a highly intelligent Australian matron, now in London, and who had been four-and-twenty years in the colonies, having branches of her family respectably settled both in New South Wales and Port Phillip, and to which colonies she purposes shortly to return.