1827.] Third Report of the Emigration Committee. 573 



found their belief of this " direct return," are by any means convincing 

 or satisfactory to us. 



In the first place, there is something, as it were, staggering and over- 

 powering something which alarms one's ordinary habits of belief in the 

 appearance of a table occupying a whole page in folio ; closely figured 

 and printed ; and exemplifying the exact course of payments to be made, 

 all the way from North America, by persons now going out from England 

 to that country as paupers, so far in futurity as up to the years 1860 and 

 1861 ! The years 1860 and 1861 ! why the world may end before that 

 time. Or the Canadas an event perhaps less improbable add them- 

 selves, "emigrants" and all, to the United States of America, The 

 mere looking through Time's telescope, for a space of thirty years, 

 diminishes every sovereign of the debt to the size of a spangle! Besides 

 which, we should doubt grievously that the cost of collection, at such a 

 distance, would swallow up all the proceeds of the settlers' rent. Pay- 

 ments in corn or cattle, made by scattered farmers in North America, to 

 be transmitted to England! How much per cent. deducting the salaries 

 of collectors, receivers, and commissioners not to speak of a whole host of 

 incidental expenses would they be worth when they arrived? Moreover, 

 the Committee forget that they have counted here, as though they were 

 reckoning matters certain, upon the honesty, industry, and success three 

 points each sufficiently questionable of all these settlers. What security 

 have we against an " emigrant" that is to say, a " pauper" that ho 

 shall not receive his location money in May grow tired of farming in 

 June and hire himself as a servant (spending all he has, first) in July? 

 Or what pledge, that the man who has secured his bounty, shall not, 

 within a fortnight afterwards, sell all he has, and proceed with the money 

 across the boundary to New York leaving the tax-gatherer, who comes 

 to levy on his land " three years after," to find the interest of his em- 

 ployer's loan, where he can find the principal ? Neither does the dis- 

 tinction taken by the Committee that the present claim would " not be 

 a claim for rent of land" but for "the liquidation of a debt actually in- 

 curred, and charged with legal interest" seem to us by any means 

 sufficiently to provide against those " difficulties, which the Committee 

 are aware have been practically experienced, both in Canada and the 

 United States, in obtaining the payment of the proceeds of land I" The 

 difference between u proceeds of land," and actual " produce*' demanded 

 from a settler, is one which we fear transatlantic minds would be slow in 

 comprehending ; and the table produced by Mr. Robinson to prove from 

 the success of former emigrants that future ones would have the means 

 of paying every thing demanded of them, seems chiefly calculated to shew 

 the distressing and dangerous extent, in which the settlers whose condition 

 he describes, and whom he " located," suffered from ague and fever in the 

 first year after their arrival. Our own impression is, that, so far from there 

 being a prospect of a " direct return" from emigrants sent out by this 

 country, the chances are ten to one that there never would be any ' return" 

 at all. But we shall leave this point. In discussing the question so far, 

 it will be observed we have spoken only of the cost or means of locating 

 the emigrants after their arrival in North America; the means of passing 

 them from Europe are to arise in another way, and from other sources ; 

 and, upon this second part of the plan, we doubt that the conclusion of 

 the Committee has been adopted even more rashly than upon that which 

 preceded it. 



