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VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS,
SEVERE REMARKS BY THE REV G. MARSH.
W *
(Argut, Wednesday.)
__ DBOOIN, Tuesday.
THE Bev. W. G. Marsh, of Melbourne
organising secretary of the Bishop of Melbourne's
Fund, gave an address here last
night in the interests of the Home Mission
Fond. In this address he referred in most
empbatio language to the village settlement
movement, his condemnation of it givine
muoh surprise to his hearerB. He spoke in
strong terms of the terrible hardships
imposed on thoBe who had been induced
to settle on the land in the form of
village settlements. He had, he said, quite
reoently visited the people thus placed on
the land, and, as far as he oould find out
not in any case was it possible for them
to obtain even sufficient food to sustain life,
To see the wasted forms, the haggard faces'
the sunken eyes of the settlers caused a
feeling of horror in him which he had never
before experienced. The placing of theBe
poor people on the land to starve was simply
removing the sickening sight from the metropolitan
looality, the residents of the city
being so tired of appeals for help that they
transported these people to a land, not flowing
with milk and honey, but rather oomposed of
such wretohedly poor soil that he would not
acoept 1000 aores of it as a gift. It was one
more instanoe of the " blight" of the times
—selfishness.
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