The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-28 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 28, 184

The monomaniasts of free trade have no taste, no
ear, no perceptivity for an enlarged scheme of emigra-
tion ; but they are sadly at a loss for some plausible
objections wherewith to resist its consideration. One
admitted source of their aversion is the tendency
which the entertaining of such a plan would have to
divert public attention from their own favourite nos-
trum, on which they have by this time expended no
small amount of capital in the way of puffing, agency,
and the other usual means of getting an article into
vogue. Their own remedy is the only one which they
will admit to be effectual ; as such they have adver-
tised it, and as such, every other that may be named,
they are bound in duty to depreciate and vilify. True,
say they, by emigration the immediate pressure might
be relieved; but, in that event, the landed aristocracy
might enjoy a renewed lease of the bread-tax, with only
a colourable alteration of the sliding scale. Again, by
emigration, they argue, the minister of the day might
send from the distressed districts a considerable num-
ber
of labourers, and, by easing the local rates and be-
nevolent funds, obtain credit with the -unthinking for
having alleviated, if not relieved the distress.
The weight of these objections will not be consi-
dered as very serious, when, on a moment's investiga-
tion, we find that they just amount to this--namely,
first, that the people might be relieved; and, secondly,
that a Tory minister might gain the credit of achieving
so good a work ! There is another argument made
use of, but it is adduced not so much for the purpose
of decrying the plan, as with a view to deter a Con-
servative Cabinet from adopting it. As it shows the
excited state of mind of the parties on the question,
we shall give it in their own words. " But, suppos-
ing," say they, " an immediate alleviation to be effected

by sending out a few thousands of emigrants by means
of a parliamentary grant, can Peel and his aristocratic
cabinet believe the people of this kingdom are so be-
sotted as to accept such incomplete and temporary re-
lief, with the necessary condition of increased taxa-
tion, whilst the landlord's tax and all other monopolies
remain as permanent burdens upon the nation ?" On
the whole, it is evident that the great cause of alarm
in the mind of the confederates is, that the emigration
plan may do some damage to the repute and sale of
that commodity in which they deal themselves, and
which they have been so long holding forth as the na-
tion's infallible and only restorative. But all the world
is, fortunately, not quite so intensely occupied with the
charms, or persuaded of the virtues of this wonderful
elixir, drug, bolus, or call it what you will, and does
not, perhaps, see by what necessity it is that they must
interfere with each other. Free trade or cheap corn
may be an excellent thing ; but it does not follow from
that, that emigration might not be a very excellent
thing also in its way. The two appliances are quite
compatible ; the emigrationist does not necessarily de-
ny the virtues of free trade, whatever they may be ; it
is the free-trader who falls into this error of exclusiv-
ism, and will bear no rival near his throne; it is not
necessary that we should postpone our scheme of emi-
gration till we have adjusted our differences on the
subject of import duties; let it stand upon its own pe-
destal, and, whatever be the objections, let them be ad-
vanced as objections to emigration, and not as objec-
tions important only because they stand in the way of
something else.

Whatever difficulties there may be in fixing upon
any determinate mode of carrying out the object, to
the theory of emigration we have heard of no objec-
tions that may not be very easily overturned. Let us
consider any one or more of them, and we shall find it
an easy matter to convince ourselves of their futile
character.

It is admitted that emigration would be a relief to
some extent; but it is said you have no right to trans-
port the people from the land in which they were born,
until all methods of providing for them within it have
failed; the people are not too many for the soil ; it is
only partial, unjust, and restrictive laws which make
them so.

Now, in the first place, with regard to what is called
the "transportation" of the people, this, we may ob-

serve, is an objection purely of the sentimental kind—
fanciful rather than solid, and easily dissipated by a