The Sun.
London, England, 1858-10-20 00:00:00

£2,500,000 in the private securities. We may also'
remind the Times that such a reduction invariably
takes place at this time of year, in conse ,uence of
the repayment to the Bank, at or immedi it ely before
the payment of the dividend,.for their dvances on
stock.

The bullionist organ also asserts that " by a cer-
tain set of persons, the lesson of non-interference,
as regards corn or cotton, has been learnt only by
rote, and all the old work must be gone through
again, to show that it applies equally to gold ! "
Why, that is all that the monetary free trader's
have ever required. We ask the Times to show us
a single instance in which, during a scarcity of
either commodity, a larger quantity was abstracted
from the general market and stored up under a
distinct act of Parliament, to increase the profits of
hard calculators and compel the consumers to pay
a famine price. Verily the Times frequently puts
forward awkward arguments, which, like two-
edged swords, are more dangerous to friends than
to opponents, but seldom if ever has it resorted to
one more clear and decisive against the ill-omened
and ill-advised Act of 1844.

The marvels of Free-trade Commerce, and of our
vast emigration, are, no doubt, intimately con-
nected. To our best customer, the United States,
we have sent, within the last forty-two years,
nearly three millions of emigrants ; and to British
America upwards of one million, the half of both
these having left our shores between 1847 and
1854 ; while the recent emigration to Australia has
amounted to upwards of six hundred thousand
persons. Where our countrymen settle most
our exports are immeasurably the largest.
India has had but few of our emigrants,
partly from unavoidable causes, but partly also
through the discouraging policy of the East India
Company, and our exports thither have amounted
to hardly 2s. per head of the population. To the
States and British America, on the contrary, they
have amounted to ten times that sum; and to Aus-
tralia our exports have been in more than twenty
times the proportion that they have been to Ame-
rica. In the latter country there was, of course,
little local manufacturing, and the British emi-
grants constitute nearly the whole of the popula-
tion.

The paper read by Mr. T. M. MACKAY, of the
great Liverpool firm of JAMES BAINES and Co., on
the subject of emigration, was full of many inte-
resting facts, but the great fact that in the forty-
two years we have sent forth from among ourselves a
population equal to that of any of the smaller
European kingdoms, and one equal to that of Lon-
don, or nearly so, within the last seven years, is
the most surprising. It has been quietly done.
With the exception of the exodus from the Irish
famine and the " rush" to the gold fields, it has
gone on so gradually that it has produced little
visible effect on the surface of the country. It has
been a kind of insensible perspiration of our body
politic, and has, no doubt, prevented much social
disease which we must otherwise have endured. Ire-
land has perhaps been almost, we may say, saved
by emigration taking her sons to the lands of
abundant work and good pay, and by the Encum-
bered Estates Court putting the land at home into
hands which could afford to pay reasonable wages
for reasonable work. Her contributions to emi-
gration have, as might be expected, considerably
diminished. In 1851 her sons composed nearly
76 per cent. of the total emigrants ; in 1857 they
did not amount to 41 per cent.
There is one fact respecting the Irish emigrants
to which Mr. MACKAY did almost poetical justice,
and rightly—their affectionate interest in those
they left behind them. We are accustomed to hear
enough of the dirt and improvidence, the turbu-
lence and the illiteracy of the Irish peasantry, and
to contrast it with the intelligence and supposed
higher morality of the Scotch peasantry. But
there are two sides to almost every case. If Paddy
marries early and supports his children on the
food of his pigs, his illegitimate offspring are not
above a sixth or seventh of that of his prudent
northern neighbour. If he keeps the Sun-
day less strictly, and could not adduce
a text of Holy Writ for any of the five
points, or even for transubstantiation and the
Papal supremacy, he can remember his poor rela-
tions to the amount of nearly a million per annum ;
that immense sum have the hardworking and
successful Irish emigrants abroad actually remitted
to support or comfort their relatives in their native
land, or to enable them to join them across the seas !
Well might Mr. MACKAY remark, " it is beyond all
human calculation to imagine the amount of misery
which this prodigious fund has not merely relieved,
but absolutely annihilated; and whatever may be the
creed of those whose chief anxiety is to share the
blessings of Providence with their poor kindred,
rest assured that in that day when the Almighty
discerner of the human heart makes up his jewels,
such warm-hearted followers of their Divine Master
will not be forgotten."
The story of the numbers of each class which
have emigrated is one of some interest, nor is it

without instruction. " Labourers" form. of course
the substance of all emigration. Not only do they
most of all want to better their condition, but they
carry everywhere the means of doing it. They
can always work, and in the great resorts of emi-
gration the want of workmen will be always felt.
The man with hands and arms used to labour can
always aid in the subjugation of unreclaimed nature,
and, whether it be the prairie, or the Canadian
forest, or the gold-field, he is at home. He can
raise food at least ; he can raise more than he con-
sumes ; he can send us the surplus, and if he gets
but a sixth or seventh of what we pay for it, he
has set our looms to work to that extent, and has
found employment for our shipbuilder, our mer-
chant, our seaman, and all the classes who work
for them. The stalwart labourer and his family
are and
always will be the most numerous emi-
grants, and the most likely to succeed.
Gentlemen, especially professional gentlemen,
alas, of all kinds, are the other and the hopeless
extreme. Eleven hundred of this class have
sought refuge in America from their overcrowded
ranks in this country, and twelve hundred in Aus-
tralia. Let such gentlemen be told, if they need
to be told it again, that the colonies is not the place
for them. Capital, mechanical skill, or strong
arms, alone can succeed there. Very few doctors
are needed where healthy employment and fresh air
make all robust ; very few lawyers where dealings
are simple, and the relations of property as yet but
little complicated; very few clerks and scribes of
all sorts where each man can keep all the accounts
he wants ; and as to gentlemen of the author class,
why a few printers and one editor are quite enough,
and more than enough, to publish all the news,
where politics are nothing, where wonders are
those of nature around them only, and where
accidents and offences are not numerous enough to
fill half a column a week.

It is pleasing to learn that the efforts of the Emi-
gration Commissioners have not been in vain.
When they, first commenced their task the height
between decks of an emigration ship was not suffi-
cient to permit a man of moderate stature to walk
upright; the provisions were one pound of bread
per day, or seven pounds_of potatoes as an equivalent