The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-03-12 00:00:00

MR. GOLDWIN SMITH ON EMIGRATION
TO VIRGINIA.

The following letter has been received from Mr.
Goldwin Smith by. a friend in England :
My dear —,—ln case your mind should be turned, as I
see the minds of many in England are turned, to emigration
as the means of escaping the economical difficulties and perils
which, I fear, are gathering round the country, let me beg
you not to overlook the opening just now presented In the
Southern States—especially in Virginia—where there is a
great demand for emigrants to fill the odd created by the
civil war, and where the death of slavery has left vacant a
rich heritage on which free labour may at once enter.
People's eyes have hitherto been fixed to,, exclusively on
New York and the West. Virginia is a magnificent state, to
point of resources and capabilities as well as in point of ex-
tent and situation. The soil Is rich, including excellent wheat
land, particularly in the West ; in the East it has been some-
what exhausted, though I presume not irreparably, by slave
culture. :On the Chesapeake Bay and along the Jim. River
there are some unhealthy tracts, which of course shi.uld be
avoided: but the climate of the State generally is healthy as
well as temperate. It is a great thing for the emigrant, in
every respect, to escape the long and severe winters of the
North and West.
.The old planters, who at first clung to their estates,
though they had lost their slaves, seem now to have made up
their minds to sell; and land is offered cheap, in some cases
with buildings, though I suppoeu oilaphiated by the war.
: Slavery is really dsa t and burled, and the antl-industrial
sentiment which prevailed under the old regime, and barred
the Southern States against Industrial emigration, would no
longer be found in the way. The people are the most Eng-
lish of all Americans : they are very friendly to the
mother country, and very anxious that their State should
be filled up by Engllah emigrants, not by the carpet-
baggers and their train. In the Northern States the Eng-
lish emigrant now finds himself, I am sorry to say, not
only M a foreign, but in a hostile country. Wherever the
blame may lie, or whatever the cause may be, this 13 the
fact ; and I cannot help being sensible of it, In spite of
the satisfaction of my own position, and the kindness
with which I am personally received. A tic (Anal source
of the ill-feeling, no doubt, are the Irish, mom whom the
Southern States are, at present, ettlrely free, though If
the vacuum is not filled, it is too probable that they
may thaw In. An Roglish Virginia would be the best
counterpoise to the Irish vote, and the b3st counteraction
to the bias which, In all matters between the two nations,
the hope of winning that vote gives to the language and
conduct of the politicians et this county. There are a
good many English here It is true, but they are scattered ;
they neither act together as Englishmen nor amalgamate
with the Americans, few of them comparatively becoming
naturalised, and thus, though nobody denies that they are
good citizens, better citizens than the Irish or most of the
Germans, and though in the civil war they contributed to
the army five times as many men in proportion to their
numbers as the Irish did, they meet the fate o ;the weak,
count for nothing In the calculations of politicians, and