Emigration

“ And, whatever may have been the true state of matters in 1840—1843, with regard to the problems of population, production, and emigration, how, taking a candid review of all the facts and prospects, can it be possible at this epoch to provide for the fresh mouths we know must be fed in the years to come, otherwise than by reducing the numbers of the people under some 'comprehensive scheme of emigration'? ”

“ Emigration, however necessary as the obvious means of providing for the increasing population of early-settled and over-peopled countries, is indeed a very serious matter to the individual emigrant and his family. ”

“ The political and social results of emigration, though not susceptible of precise treatment, yet reinforce the conclusion I have drawn from a consideration of economical conditions. Older and long settled countries have, in the course of time, less reason to regret parting with various classes of their inhabitants. ”

“ If these families come, many others will come after them, and thus spontaneous emigration will be developed for our country. In the disposition with which they are now proposing to emigrate, it is natural that they should flow into the same place, and the country which has the happiness to receive well the first emigrants will receive all. ”

“ England, therefore, encourages emigration; means are notoriously supplied to emigrants, to assist their conveyance, from public funds; and the New World, and most especially these United States, receive the many thousands of her subjects thus ejected from the bosom of their native land by the necessities of their condition. ”

“ The emigration note vibrates in the air, and thrills the hearts of our people who have had convincing demonstration during these last ten years while party struggles have principally absorbed the energies of their public men, that the grandest of modern States, the most flourishing, the most peaceful and peaceable, has attained its astonishing prosperity, has acquired its incredible riches, mainly through emigration ”

“ The emigration of 1792 was composed of only one class of individuals, who had no other profession than that of arms; the emigration of 1685 comprised all the constituent elements of a people—merchants, manufacturers, mechanics, labourers. Moreover, the refugees founded numerous and useful establishments, of which many yet still remain, while the later emigrants have nowhere left enduring traces of their passage. ”

“ Settling in England, he interested himself in the emigration movement, edited in 1844 ‘The Colonist’ and ‘The Colonial Magazine and East India Review,’ was honorary secretary of a colonisation society, wrote in 1848 ‘Some Suggestions for a System of General Emigration,’ lectured on colonisation in 1849, published a manual for colonists, ‘How to Emigrate,’ in 1850, and visited the western highlands on behalf of the emigration commissioners. ”

“ The emigrant views emigration simply as the means of improving his own condition; the public are supposed to take a wider and more philosophical view of the subject—but I fear the public view is rather hazy and indistinct ”

“ SECTION 2.—UNIVERSAL EMIGRATION. We have in our remarks on the Over-Sea Colony referred to the general concensus of opinion on the part of those who have studied the Social Question as to Emigration being the only remedy for the overcrowded population of this country, at the same time showing some of the difficulties which lie in the way of the adoption of the remedy; the dislike of the people to so great a change as is involved in going from one country to another ”

“ If we consider emigration as a desirable thing for them, they are not able of themselves to accomplish it. However fair or however rich a distant land may be, they are unable to reach it without help. ”

“ The importance of immigration and emigration is firstly, the addition or subtraction thereby made to or from the supply of labor, and, secondly, the influence of the immigrants upon those habits of the community, which in turn affect the supply of labor. ”

“ Emigration.—The movement of emigration may be divided into two currents, temporary and permanent—the former going chiefly towards neighbouring European countries and to North Africa, and consisting of manual labourers, the latter towards trans-oceanic countries, principally Brazil, Argentina and the United States. These emigrants remain abroad for several years, even when they do not definitively establish themselves there. ”

“ Besides this, in those distant days, the difficulties of emigration were so great that they were rarely voluntarily encountered except by men of much more than average courage, enterprise and resource. ”

“ Nothing now remained for me but to return to my country. In crossing the frontier, at the end of the second emigration, I could not avoid thinking of the circumstances of my return after the first, and what a difference of sentiment distinguished them! ”

“ If, in eighteen days, 800 emigrants had taken their departure, the number in a year must amount, it may be presumed, to some thousands. But this is only the beginning: emigration, we know, increases in a geometrical ratio. ”

“ Emigration has, also, a singular effect in developing the latent powers of the emigrant, and the children of emigrants are usually more active, more energetic than the children of the older inhabitants of the country among whom they settle. ”

“ Whatever the future may bring forth, then, our immigration at present springs from European sources. [136] Every country on the continent furnishes its contingent, 169large or small. From the cities, towns, and villages, most of all from the rural sections, even to the most remote corners of the back districts, they come, inspired with great hopes by the emigration agents and the labor contractors, aided by friends or relatives or future employers on the other side. Homes and property are mortgaged, the labor of their bodies—even their very souls—are pledged, to pay their passage. ”

“ But if the population was nowhere excessive, there were in all countries certain classes for which emigration to new lands offered a desired opportunity. There were the men bitten with the spirit of adventure, to whom the work of the pioneer presented an irresistible attraction. ”

“ Considered from the point of view of the country furnishing these migratory classes, temporary emigration has this advantage over definitive emigration, that the persons leaving the country always maintain their economic connection with their home. ”

“ Of Emigration.—“A country may be so circumstanced, as to require that a portion of its population should migrate from one part of it to another, either permanently or occasionally; and may still, on the whole, have no actual excess of population. ”

“ Thus we find that, in this respect also, moral as well as physical causes control emigration. The first are as powerful, if not more powerful than the latter. In the United States, both are at work in attracting emigrants, and hence why there is a larger European immigration to this country than to any other on the face of the globe. ”

“ There was, moreover, a great amount of truth in this view during earlier periods of immigration. Many of the migrations of two or three centuries ago were inspired by religious or political motives, or very often by a combination of the two. Such was the exodus of the Huguenots from France, of the Palatines from 378Germany, the Puritans from England, the Scotch-Irish from Ireland. In such cases as these, emigration implies strength of character, independence, firmness of conviction, moral courage, bravery, hatred of oppression, etc. ”

“ When the rod has been bent too much in one direction, it may be bent too far in the opposite way, in the effort to make it straight. We have no doubt but that it is so in the case before us, and that emigration is now receiving less attention from the people than it deserves.
That the emigration of the past years has been of the greatest benefit to the laboring classes appears from two obvious circumstances, viz., the decrease of pauperism and the rise of wages. ”

“ In other instances, emigration has proceeded from a less exalted purpose, in periods of less general intelligence, or more without plan and by accident; or under circumstances, physical and moral, less favorable to the expectation of laying a foundation for great public prosperity and future empire. ”

“ If this be properly attended to, emigration, which principally benefits the labourer, may be discontinued. We have now arrived at a pass when the absence of those who have already emigrated becomes a matter of regret. ”

“ The reasons for emigration must ever be strong, for the Bohemians cling to the inherited strip of land, to the cottage they were born in, to the little church on the hill, and the rattling mill on the brook. ”

“ On the subject of emigration, it is not my intention to dwell at any length. ”

“ A great emigration necessarily implies unhappiness of some kind or other in the country that is deserted. ”

“ It is true, paupers themselves rarely emigrate, but the persons who were on the out-door relief lists in 1848 have mainly supplied the places of the labourers above them, who have migrated. At the same time, I wish it to be understood that all the emigration arising from bad laws at home is injurious; but the emigration which arises from the discovery of new fertile land, and poverty at home, is beneficial. ”

“ Emigration also has been taking place upon an extensive scale; but for the common class of emigrants, at least, the advantage of emigration is chiefly represented by the chance of earning larger wages. ”

“ So far as most, indeed all, European countries are concerned, it is evident that either a diminished birth-rate, or emigration, is essential for the maintenance of even the low standard of comfort that at present exists. ”

“ Valuable emigration field in these colonies.It is far from my purpose, in laying these facts before Your Majesty, to discourage emigration to Your North American colonies. On the contrary, I am satisfied that the chief value of those colonies to the mother country consists in their presenting a field where millions even, of those who are distressed at home, might be established in plenty and happiness. All the gentlemen whose evidence I have last quoted, are warm advocates of systematic emigration. ”

“ The first year of this record, 1908, followed the financial panic of October, 1907, and due to the economic conditions prevalent in the United States a very large emigration to Europe was disclosed.
The records show also that the volume of emigration, like that of immigration, varies from year to year. Just as prosperity here increases immigration, bad times increase emigration from our shores. ”

“ Noble and successful efforts are making by the Bible, Missionary, Tract, Sabbath School, Temperance, and other Societies in the West. Great and rapid changes are taking place, if not to the extent we desire, yet corresponding in a degree with the gigantic march of emigration and population. Many other reasons might be urged to show that its prospective increase of population will vastly exceed the ratio of its retrospective increase, but these are sufficient. ”

“ We must not forget that during all these years there has been pouring into our country a vast stream of emigration, and that this, taken in connection with the fact that our country is productive beyond all others, gave us only four doubles in one hundred years. ”

“ Ancient migrations were, moreover, somewhat different from modern immigration and emigration. Ancient migrations were largely those of peoples or tribes, while in modern times migration is more of an individual matter. ”

“ The Americans do not emigrate—they migrate; and there are spots in any of these three kingdoms, as wild, as solitary, and as healthful, as can be found in the regions of the Far West. But we do not, however, suggest migration as a substitute for genteel emigration—although we suspect it would in many cases prove so—but merely as a step towards it—a school of trial, or training, or both. ”

“ And will therefore produce an immediate relief, restoring to the remainder of the three hundred their proper share of necessaries; so would the emigration of sixty. But mark the difference three generations hence. Our young people who emigrate carry their descendants with them to a land where they are wanted. The descendants of your pauper cultivators must be turned out upon society after all, in greater numbers than you now abstract from it. ”

“ This being a part of my daily occupation, I was naturally led to look at the tables of emigration, and to consider at what rate that tide of living beings has been running out from our shores. The circumstances of a country sometimes render this a question of peculiar importance to it. The labour of a country is of course paralysed without capital to employ it and to make judicious arrangements for it, and these two require a third great instrument of production, viz. land, before these advantages can be gained. ”

“ The accompanying abstract, from the returns of the Emigration Commissioners, exhibits two most remarkable results:—1st, The proportion of emigration to British America and other destinations is gradually falling off; 2d, That to the United States is steadily and rapidly increasing, so that they now receive four out of every five emigrants who leave our shores. ”

“ Such a society could not fail to meet with support from the public generally. I here throw out the rough idea of a great Emigration Society for England, to be brought into shape by those who know more of the subject than I do. ”

“ The best method of emigration is to dispatch from the United Kingdom every year, say, 500,000 youths and girls from 15 years of age and upwards. These would find homes at low wages in settlers’ families in Canada, South Africa and Australia, and would become acclimatised and absorbed into the population. This emigration should be a State scheme and COMPULSORY. But the emigrants should not be made slaves of. ”