The Sun.
London, England, 1827-04-09 00:00:00

EMIGRATION.

SECOND REPORT FROM THE SELECT COMMITTEE
ox EMIGRATION FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM, 18-4.

The Select Committee appoirted to consider the subject of
Emigration from the United Kingdom, and to whom the
Report of the last Session, and the several Petitions
which have been presented to the House, in the present
Session of Parliament, on the same subject, were re-
ferred; and who were empowered to report their obser-
vations and opinions thereupon, together with the Mi-
nutes of-Evidence taken before them from time to time
to the House, have further considered the matters to
them referred, and have agreed upon the following
Report :
The inquiry into the general subject of emigration is con-
nected with so many important questions, and involves
considerations so various and complicated, that although
upon many of them your Committee have received a mass
of very valuable and satisfactory evidence, they do not feel
themselves in a situation to present to the House, so goon
as they would have desired to do, a general and final Re-
port. But, in the prosecution of their investigations, a
special case has been submitted to them, so serious and so
urgent, as to induce them to devote to it, for the present,
their principal attention, and without further delay to lay
it specially before the House.
In addition to those ordinary causes, which in many
parts of the United Kingdom appear to have led to a su-
perabundant population, or rather to disproportion
between the demand and the supply of labour, an im-
portant change has been wrought, and is still in gradual
but certain progress, in the condition of some of the ma-
nufacturing districts, by the transition from Hand-loom to
Power-loom weaving. For some time the advance in the
cotton trade was so rapid as nearly, if not altogether to
absorb in the more productive system, the hands thus
thrown out of employment. But difficulties arising from a
temporary check in trade, shortly fell upon the weavers
with the double pressure of these two combined causes,
a diminished demand for the produce of their industry,
and an increased facility of production.
Your Committee are fully sensible that, to a certain ex-
tent, these disastrous consequences to a portion of the com-
munity must follow upon every new invention by which
human labour is abridged : and that it is more especially
the interest of a commercial country, far from discouraging,
to afford every protection to such inventions : and while
your Committee lay down this doctrine in its fullest ex-
tent, they feel themselves bound to add, that those who in
the present instance are the chief sufferers, appear to mani-
fest juster ideas, and a more ready acquiescence in this ge-
neral principle, than could have been expected from their
situation in life, and from the personal feelings with which
their view of the case must be mixed up. But your Com-
mittee would wish to call the attention of the House to two
circumstances which appear to distinguish this special case
from those of ordinary occurrence. Independently of the
extent of the change, the time at which it has taken place,
with reference to their peculiar branch of trade, is for the
weavers most unfortunate; and most, if not all, the ordi-
nary
channels of labour, are in such a state of repletion,
that it is difficult for them to transfer their industry else-
where.

Though the state of distress, bordering upon actual fa-
mine, which these causes have produced in districts exten-
sively concerned in the cotton trade is so notorious es hardly
to require pressing upon the 'Rouse, your Committee have
had it confirmed by the strongest and fullest evidence.—
These districts appear to embrace in England a large por-
tion of the county of Lancashire, together with parts of
Cheshire, of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and of Cum-
berland ; and in Scotland principally, so far as the evidence
i}efore your Committee has gone, the counties of Renfrew
and Lanark. In mitigation of this extensive distress, sums
have been raised from various funds, by legal provision, by
spontaneous contribution, and recently by the King's let-
ter, and have mainly tended to preserve those districts from
the immediate horrors of famine, and from the possible
evils of riot and disturbance. But your Committee deem
it their duty not to conceal from the House, that, notwith-
standing the temporary aid thus afforded, the long-continued
pressure of the lowest class upon the poor rates legally
raised in England, and of the same class of persons on
the funds raised in various ways in Scotland, has ex-
tended the distress to the ranks immediately above; and
that not only the local funds appear in many instances
nearly exhausted, but the lower order of rate payers, far
from being able to contribute to the relief of their pauper
neighbours, are become themselves dependent upon casual
or parochial assistance.
Under these circumstances, the 'Manufacturers' Relief
Committee with the fullest daily information before them,
concurring in the statement above made, agreeing with
your Committee in opinion, that there is little hope that
any revival of trade can bring back the employment of the
distressed Hand-loom Weavers, and that the fulness of
other branches of labour renders it difficult for them to
transfer their industry ; aware also, that temporary aid,
however valuable in itself, and however judiciously applied,
can only produce temporary benefit, have been led to turn
their attention to the objects which your Committee have
in view. Satisfied of the efficiency and permanence of the
benefit to be afforded by emigration, they have signified
their readiness to contribute in furtherance of thaw objects
the sum of 23,000/. being a large proportion of their re-
maining funds, provided the farther sum of 50,0001. can
be obtained from other sources.
The assistance thus tendered appears to your Committee
doubly valuable, first, as making the strong sense enter-
tained by a most respectable end well-informed body, that
the mode suggested is at once the cheapest and most effec-
tual relief which can be afforded ; and secondly, as fur-
nishing the means of complying with that which your
Committee have uniformly laid down as a rule of action,
and have thought it expedient to make the substance of a
special Report presented in the present year :—" That pri-
vate or local contribution in some shape ought to form the
basis of any system of Emigration to which it may he ex-
pedient for this Committee to recommend any assistance
from the National Funds."
Your Committee do not consider it necessary, upon the oc-
casion of this Special Report, to enter into details of expense,
they deem it sufficient to state broadly, that they are satisfied
from the inquiries which they have made, the particulars
of which will, with the evidence they have hitherto received,
shortly be laid before the House, that the sum of 75,000/.
if raised, will be sufficient to remove, provision, and locate
in the North American colonies above 1,200 families,
amounting to between six and seven thousand souls ; and your
Committee have received assurances from the Colonial De-
partment, that preparation is already made for receiving,
if need were, especially in Nova Scotia, a considerably
larger number of emigrants at a very short notice.
Recurring to the persons whom it is proposed to make
the immediate objects of this offer of removal, it is riecee.
wiry to acquaint the House, that in the districts above
alluded to, and more especially in Lancashire, there appear
to be among the hand-loom weavers, two classes almost
wholly distinct from each other : the one, who though they
take in work in their own houses or cellars, are congre-
gated in the large manufacturing towns ; and the other,
scattered in small hamlets or single houses, in various
directions throughout the manufacturing country. It is
to the situation of this latter class, though both are in a
state extremely deplorable, that your Committee would
chiefly wish to direct the attention of the House. It
appears that persons of this description, for many
years
past, have been occupiers of email farms of a few acres,
which they have held at high rents ; and combining
the business of a hand-loom weaver with that of a working
farmer, have assisted to raise the rent of their land from
the profits of their loom. Upon this class it is, that the
distresses of the times have fallen with peculiar hard-
ship. While the decline of their manufacturing busi-
ness has utterly disabled them from supplying those
rents which were due from them as agriculturists, they
have found themselves called upon
to give support, as
liable to the rates, to those of their fellow weavers who
were engaged in manufacture alone t and a remnant of