Page:The A. B. C. of Colonization.djvu/17

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

12

pioneers. Those so selected would feel the sacredness of the charge, and the trust thus reposed in them. The parties named in the group attached to the rules are actual families in the north of Scotland, and the names of some hundreds of which I have received as being anxious to emigrate, but the necessity which may exist in cases like these in breaking up families, and they will be most numerous, need not hinder those who may be enabled to pay half their passage money, or more emigrating together. A society of this nature must use due precaution not to allow families to incur too heavy a debt to the Society, such as families No. 1 and 5 of the group in question would stand in, were the Society, considering the smallness of their contribution, to give the whole of them a passage at once. The Rules which have been submitted are only "Proposed Rules,"—they may be modified if required,—for instance, debt incurred on account of loan by emigrants may be legalized and recovered in the usual manner, if found necessary, families and individuals being held responsible only for loans contracted by themselves, though in groups they will have to consider themselves morally bound to use their utmost exertions for the recovery of loans granted to their own party, by aiding the agents in such recovery; such a revision, as it would lessen the responsibility of parties, and would make the Society liable to greater losses through defaulters, may make it necessary that in the spirit of Rule 22, each adult be required to pay 10s. each as a fee, and 2s, for each child in addition to their passage money, this sum to be paid with their last instalment to the Loan Society, and that further they be called upon and bound to pay such fees, in due proportion, of such parties of their own group as may become defaulters, and that in order to