WILL COMPEL EMIGRATION. 9 



the farmer's diminished profits : viz., home competition for 

 the possession of land. The soil here is now becoming more 

 valuable for other purposes than ordinary farming, and the 

 proportion between the producers and consumers of food is 

 undergoing a rapid change. It appears from the Census that, 

 in 1851, only 16 per cent, of the adult population of England 

 was occupied in the business of agriculture. During the pre- 

 vious twenty years the proportion had fallen from 28 to 16 

 per cent., from no actual decrease of the numbers employed 

 in agriculture, but from the far greater proportional increase 

 of trade. The same gradual change is going on. At this time 

 there is probably not more than one-tenth of the adult pop- 

 ulation of England employed in the culture of the land. The 

 manufacturing, mining, and town populations are thus grad- 

 ually absorbing the business of the country, increasing the 

 value of the land and the profits of the landowner, but in the 

 same proportion diminishing the area left for ordinary farm- 

 ing. 



The time seems thus to have arrived when the farmers must 

 thin the ranks of home competition by sending off the young 

 and enterprising to countries where they may become the 

 owners of a fertile soil, and profitably contribute to supply the 

 wants of the old country, whose land can no longer meet the 

 demands of her dense population. During the last year we 

 have imported into this country at the rate of nearly one mil- 

 lion quarters of grain each month. We have thus in addition 

 to our home crop, consumed each day the produce of TEN 

 THOUSAND acres of foreign land, a demand so vast as to offer 

 to young men of our own country the strongest inducements 

 to take their share in its supply. 



Having, during last autumn, had an opportunity of making 

 a pretty careful inspection of a part of the valley of the Upper 

 Mississippi, probably the most fertile com region in the world, 

 1* 



