The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-03-12 00:00:00

THE TIDE OF EMIGRATION.

The Times of Wednesday had a leader on the
reeently.publishe.d emigration returns, from which we
make the following extracts :

The returns of emigration .e.nd immigration lately pub-
lished remind us once more that, whatever the reasons, the
inhabitants of these Isles are the most increasing and
multiplying in the world. No political community
ever contained so abundant a fountain of that strength
which is among the essential elements of power,
wealth, and progress. Our population has to bear
all the drains borne by our neighbours, and some
that they are spared. We have not only to sustain and to
protect our peaceful dominion over the sea, and to feed
numerous colonies with that labour which Is .the first re-
quisite; we have to supply the vast republic rapidily occupy-
ing the vast regions of North America with the hands
necessary for adapting a continent to the wants of civilized
man. As fast as the aborigines recede, or disappear, the
children of our towns and villages take their place.
Without such outlets, the prolific habits of our race as-
sume even an alarming aspect. A school of economists
has thought it a duty to check increase by enactments
of an almost penal character, and that were even ostenta-
tious interferences with nature. They denounce as pre-
sumptuous rashness the old saying that "Heaven never
sends mouths but it sends meat; " and certainly, if Eng-
land had had to be content with its own small area, some-
thing in the nature of a revolution or a miracle would have
been wanted to feed so many. We have lived, however, to
see what is neither a revolution nor a miracle, but which
more than answers the end once thought impossible.
The British races, since they began to outgrow their
narrow home, have been peopling that Greater Britain
which extends round the world, and in which we may fairly
comprehend the States that prefer a new dynasty every
four years to a new Parliament every seven. By even too
many common characteristics We cannot doubt they are of
kith and kin, and we may hail them as members of an ever
widening family circle. Once a year we are reminded of our
' immense, and, no doubt, necessary, contributions to these
and other relations, who would be poor indeed without
hem... .
4 The respective contributions of the different parts of these
Isles show that emigration can no longer be regarded as
an enforced expatriation of a class flying from its oppressors.
Of the net emigration of last year 111,845 were English, 22,056
were Scotch, 93,641 were Irish. The English superabundance
is as much driven to seek homes elsewhere as the Irish.
There is room for neither of us in the land, unless we choose
to descend to intolerable conditions of life, and, as it
happens, the standard of those conditions does not descend
but ascend, for no class can now live in the condition it was
content with even so recently as half a century ago. It is re-
markable, however, that while the English and the Scotch net
emigration of last year WA s not very considerably in advance of
the year before, that of Ireland was more than 52,000 in
advance—that is, considerably more than double. There has
been no such emigration from Ireland since the years im-
mediately following the great famine. Indeed, for the years
1876, 1877, and 1878 the emigration was very low. Theivcon-
dition of Ireland had fallen to the lowest last winter through
two successive bad harvests, to be followed, possibly, by a
third

The declared occupation of the emigrants shows that
every class and profession contributes to it. The emigra-
tion of one year would constitute a society fulfilling all the
requirements of a respectable and civilized State. There is,
indeed, plenty of the rough material, under the denomina-
tion of general labourers, and no doubt they are the first
requisite, but they do not seem out of proportion.
In some respects it it is impossible that an emigra-
tion, to whaviver part of the world, should be a
perfectly true specimen of the community left behind. It
does not take out with it the same proportion of females, of
'children, of old and sick folks, of thoroughly incompetent
and useless people, of rich people blessed with means and with
the power of using them usefully and pleasantly, of clergy, or
of the comparatively fe w men who are qualified to rise in a
highly artificial state of society. A colony—and a general
emigration is but a colony spreading over the world—leaves
behind in the burdens of life, and also its ornaments, and
something of sweetness and strength. It may be taken as a
rule that nobody leaves his own dear country who is satis-
fied with his place in it, or who see his way of petting on lust,
or who has ever made many friends in it. Untoward circum-
stances, combined, possibly, with an ungenial temperament,
are necessary to the separation of the very strong ties that
bind a man to his native soil and to the familiar faces of his
infancy and youth. So painful is banishment to many
natures, and so often are those very natures found wanting
in seltassertfrm and seltadvancement, that, as they easily
acquire personal and local attachments, and yet cannot
hope to do much anywhere, it becomes a question
whether they had better be little people here, or little
people, hardly less, in a colony. Where people evidently
find it impossible to get on, or even make their way
at home, emigratioa seems at least a solution of exist-
ing difficulties. Society, however, is hardly an impartial
adviser, for its interest is to get rid of people who make
large demands on it, and whom it is often found impossible
to help. Many such go in the stream, and throw discredit
on emigration by their consequent failure. On the whole,
we have no reason to complain of the ineffective part of the
great social army left on our hands at home, if the annual
emigration consists of the materials best adapted to its mis-
sion of extending man's dominion over the earth.