EMIGRATION. 



EMIGRATION. 



any benefit on it, and those of the same kind who were left behind 

 would hardly be more susceptible of improvement for the absence of 

 any part of their numbers which did not amount to pretty nearly 

 the whole number; while the industrious and the intelligent, who, by 

 the supposition, remain at home and are willing to labour whenever 

 it is in their power, would hardly derive any benefit by this removal 

 of the bad from among them, at all commensurate to the amount of 

 capital which must be expended on such wholesale exportations. 

 Besides, as already observed, unless a proper supply of emigrant 

 capitalists can be secured, all general plans for the emigration of 

 labourers can only lead to disappointment and starvation. Any plan 

 therefore which shall have for its object the amelioration of a population 

 sunk in ignorance or debased by pauperism, must be one of an internal 

 character, one which must gradually and on certain fixed principles 

 aim at removing the evils which exist in the social system. Emigra- 

 tion must be left to the free choice of individuals, and must be 

 recommended to the young, the sober, and industrious solely on the 

 grounds of offering to them a reasonable prospect of bettering their 

 condition in a new country. 



The disadvantages of emigration however, when there is no plan, 

 no controlling or directing power, are obvious. Emigrants often go to 

 a new country without any definite or clear notion of what they are 

 going to. Dissatisfied or unhappy at home, imagination pictures to 

 them a remote and unknown country as an asylum from all the evils 

 of life ; or if they have any distinct idea of the 'new kind of existence 

 which they are going to adopt, they often underrate the difficulties of 

 the undertaking, or form a false estimate of their own capabilities to 

 meet them. It is no wonder then that so many, on Landing in the 

 New World, are startled at the obstacles which then stare them in the 

 face, and shut their eyes to the real advantages, such as they are, 

 which a fertile unoccupied soil presents to a hardworking industrious 



We have noticed above, that the abstraction of population for the 

 >urposes of colonisation appears to promote an increase rather than a 

 diminution in the numbers of the parent state. One of the most 

 remarkable facts in the history of Great Britain is the rapid increase 

 of the population. The positive increase in our own kingdom has 

 Deen pointed out in the article CENSUS. While the population of 

 France and Germany has increased within the last fifty years in a very 

 small degree ; while in Spain, Portugal, and Italy it has probably 

 decreased ; Great Britain has increased from 10,800,000, as given in 

 the census of 1801, to 20,900,000 in that of 1851 ; and in the middle 

 of 1858, the Registrar-General estimated the popxilation of England 

 and Wales alone at 19,523,000 : Ireland and Scotland are omitted, as 

 ;here was no census of 1801. In addition to this increase, swarms have 

 seen thrown off to which the ancient migrations from the North are 

 insignificant in then- total amount, though the emigration has been 

 less striking from its being not an irruption but a gradual progress. 

 In forty-four years, from 1815 to 1858 inclusive, during which an 

 account of avowed emigrants has been taken, 4,797,166 persons, male 

 and female, have left the shores of the United Kingdom ; and these 

 liave been enabled to form what may now be termed three mighty 

 empires, subordinate to our own, in Australia, North America, and 

 South Africa ; independent of the branch streams which have flown 

 off to Ceylon, the West and East Indies, Guiana, and other British 

 possessions. The United States of America is the only dominion that 

 can afford anything like a parallel, and even that is indebted to us for 

 2,890,403 persons, who have proceeded thither, the greater proportion 

 of whom have been from Ireland, and chiefly from the years beginning 

 with 1847. 



In 1857 the total number of emigrants from the port of Liverpool 

 only, was 155,652 ; of these 9788 were for the North American colo- 

 nies; 106,918 for the United States; 32,631 for Australia and New 

 Zealand, and 324 for other places. Of these emigrants England 

 supplied 50,289 ; Scotland, 8161 ; Ireland, 71,195 ; and various 



A rtrace annual emigration from i From 1815 to 1858 

 the United Kingdom . . j For the 10 years ending 1858 



* The Custom* return* do not record any emigration to Australia during 

 thr*e ten years, but it appears from other nourccs that there went out in 1821 

 320; la 1022,875; in 18S3, 543; in 1824, 7SO ; and in 1825, 458 persons 

 These number* have not bam imluded in the totals of this Table. 



