The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-10-24 00:00:00

THE TIDE OF EMIGRATION,

TIIB recent arrivals and departures of magnificent pas-
senger ships—the Lightning, the Red Jacket, the Cham-
pion of the Seas, the Guiding Star, and others—will give
additional interest to the following article, which we
extract from the Shipping and Mercantile Gazette :

No nation contributes more active and sturdy masses
of population to people other countries than Great Britain ;
yet, with this steady and continuous drain on its vital re-
sources, no country feels so little consequent evil there-
from. The reason is obvious : the children who leave the
homes of the parent country lose none of their regard for
it, but, on the contrary, become more closely identified
in all the bonds of relationship which promote the social,
individual, and general prosperity. With better remu-
neration for their industry, and a larger sphere of opera-
tion for their energies, they become more extensive cus-
tomers to our producers and manufacturers ; and while
they advance their own interests more rapidly, and build
up for themselves fertile homesteads, they at, the same
time increase the national wealth, and give active and
profitable employment to the various branches of home
industry. The anvil and the loom, the workshop and the
shipbuilder, severally participate in the increased business
thus promoted. The man who was but a consumer of
goods to the amount of a few pounds in the year at home,
becomes in the colonies of Australia, or the back-woods of
Canada and the United States, a more important per-
sonage, with enhanced wants, and more luxurious ideas,
which he finds ample means at command to gratify.
To the Shipping Interest this passenger traffic has now
become one of the most important elements of the carrying
trade, giving profitable and continuous employment to a
large number of vessels. The emigration trade, as is well
known, centres for the most part in the two great shipping
ports of London and Liverpool, and is participated in only
to a small extent by some of the, other outports—Glasgow
sending periodically a few ships, and Southampton and
Plymouth having a moderate share of the business. The
Liverpool merchants have especially laid themselves out
for this conveyance of emigrants in passenger-vessels, and
have certainly monopolised the lion's share of the immense
traffic. For this they possessed many peculiar advantages,
from the situation of this port, and the large number who
proceeded thither from Ireland and Scotland, from which
countries the living tide first began to flow in strong
volume. Some years ago emigration was looked upon
rather in the light of banishment, and our various colonies
held out their arms in vain to receive an infliix of sturdy
hands and hearts to their population. Now the case is
altered. The difficulty is rather to place floodgates to the
stream than to widen its channel. Emigration makes
emigration. The gold discoveries of Australia continue
productive, and there seems no prospect of their falling
off. The fields are rather extending, and although indi-
vidual profits may not be so large, the aggregate yield of
gold is as extensive as ever. The trade, shipping, and
pastoral interests of our southern colonies are also
extending to an extraordinary degree, and the demand for
labour, instead of growing less, is stimulated. The cry
in all the Australian colonies is still, " Send us labour.'
The 20,000 or 30,000 a year that left from 1848 to 1851,
were but as a drop in the bucket ; and although more
emigrants quitted our shores in the last two years for
Australia than in the five previous years, yet each and all
of the settlements are demanding a still higher amount of
available labour. New South \Vales sends its £200,000
home for labour this year ; Van Diemen's Land offers a
bounty of £22 for each introduced immigrant ; Victoria,
Western Australia, and New Zealand, demand in equally
energetic terms, that more labour shall be sent there. The
chief causes of emigration to the West and the East are
still steadily at work ; and although the war may have
drafted off a large proportion of our population for our fleets
and armies, yet the exude in the current year will not be
found to differ essentially from that which has been proceed-
ing now for several years. There is an expansion and
elasticity in the new countries which absorbs readily all
the population sent them, since but few return. Saturate
the sponge as we will, it still absorbs more moisture.
The Anglo-Saxon race, in all their migrations, is proving
worthy of their lineage, and is spreading throughout the
world its false and freedom, its prosperity and progress,