CHAPTER VI.

Emigration.

DURING the last few years, the present and future position of our labouring population has been most powerfully affected by emigration. Many of the circumstances which we have already discussed, are perhaps somewhat uncertain in their operation. Opinions may differ as to the consequences which would result, if a greater area of land was owned and cultivated by labourers, and if a greater portion of our national industry was carried on through the medium of co-operative institutions. No one, however, can deny the great influence which has already been produced upon the condition of our labourers by emigration; and if this emigration continues on a large scale during many years, the remuneration of labour may be so greatly increased as materially to affect not only the labourers, but also every other section of the community. Hitherto we have had a surplus population which has supplied with labour many countries which are gradu

ally rising, or which have already risen into wealth and prosperity. We have therefore accustomed ourselves to consider emigration, without dwelling upon the no less important effects which result from an immigration of labour into a country. Some nations have a population far more dense than our own. China is peopled as thickly as it can be, until its resources are developed with greater skill and knowledge. The underpaid Chinese labourer has already shown an anxiety to leave his own country, in order to obtain the large wages which are paid in Australia and California. It is therefore not an impossible supposition, that as labour becomes dearer in our own country, we may witness a large immigration of labour into England. I therefore hope to lay before you some of the many reflections which are suggested, not only by emigration, but also by an immigration of labour on a large scale.

At the beginning of this century, when Malthus published his celebrated Essay on population, the great social and economic problem which then required solution, was the relief of an over-stocked labour market. The truth of the law was receiving a sad and practical illustration, that as population increases food becomes more expensive, unless a greater demand for agricultural produce is met by augmented importations, or by the introduction of

agricultural improvements. No pen can ever adequately describe the sufferings which our poor endured, at the period to which we are referring. Their misery becomes the more deplorable to think upon, when it is remembered that the cheap food which was required was prevented from being sent to these shores by protective duties, a policy which remains a lasting monument, of either the ignorance, or the selfishness of those who then governed the State. If seasons were unpropitious, our own deficient harvest could not be supplemented by supplies from other countries where the crop might have been more abundant, until corn advanced almost to a famine price. Men then seemed born to be a burden to themselves, and to everyone else around them. During the winter months, great numbers of able-bodied agricultural and other labourers, in vain endeavoured to obtain employment, and they were obliged to live on the parish rates, in order to avoid starvation. With a view of lessening the pecuniary burdens which such widespread pauperism entailed, various expedients were resorted to, which in many respects only aggravated the misery of the poor. Employers, not unreasonably feared, that if workmen should be attracted to a particular district by a sudden demand for labour, they would remain there to swell the surplus population of the locality, if industry should again

become inactive. Various laws were consequently passed with the avowed object of preventing labourers from moving from the locality in which they were born. These various regulations, which were termed the laws of settlement, inflicted the greatest hardship upon the labourers, because they were prevented from seeking employment in those districts where the highest wages were paid.

But bad as was the condition of the labouring classes of England, it was infinitely worse in Ireland. In no civilised country has the mass of the people ever existed in more abject misery. And yet Ireland has natural resources well adapted for the production of great wealth. It is idle, in fact, it is almost wicked to explain Ireland's misfortunes, by saying that the Celtic is naturally inferior to the Saxon race. Ireland has produced soldiers, orators, statesmen, and thinkers, who have added lustre to the history of our empire. Moreover, the people who grovel in the huts of Tipperary at once possess so many industrial virtues, when they can labour under favourable economic conditions, that they have become the pioneers of civilisation in the Western world, and have there been the chief founders of nations which seem likely to rival us in wealth and prosperity. In Ireland, everything apparently combined to lower the condition of the people. Those

who owned the land were absentee landlords, who never performed one of the duties which ought to attach to the possession of property. The land was let to peasant farmers, who were termed cottiers; they possessed no capital, except a few rude tools and the scanty furniture of their miserable dwellings. They cared not what rent they offered to pay; their only object was to obtain possession of a plot of ground; for they knew that however much they became indebted to their landlord, they had no property which he could seize, and that he must leave them sufficient potatoes to enable them to subsist. They had no motive to be industrious, or to exercise any prudence, for if they produced anything beyond a bare subsistence, it would be taken from them to pay their arrears of rent. They consequently married with the utmost recklessness, and the land, since no capital was applied to its cultivation, gradually became more and more impoverished. Since the population constantly increased, and, at the same time, the soil was more and more exhausted, the mass of the people sank deeper and deeper into the depths of abject poverty. In the year 1847 all this misery accumulated into a terrible crisis. The potato, which had become almost the sole food of the people was diseased, and the nation was decimated by the most ter