The republic. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1849-1853, 1851-11-04
Emigration from Britain.
I-Abridged from Me London IYmssl


We have repeated almost ad Talseam that the
people are leaving at the rate OF near thousand
day. In Ireland the fact is brought home 10 the
understanding in 30 forcible manner by the
tual sight OF emigrant trains, emigrant ships, de-
populated districts, ruined habitations, and labor
beginning TO rise in the market, that il cannot be
disposed of so easily as in this country. In Eng
land II has been anticipated, by some writers, that
when the Irish population should be reduced to
certain low level, the inducements to remain would
rise 80 high that the migration would stop, and
the remnant left behind would be contentedly and
permanently attached TO the soil The Irish
thorities, disposed to think very
rectly, do not expect the migration to stop soon
as the population has assumed its proper proportion
to the work to be done. The people sho have been
in the habit of paying 30s. an acre would not
remain on the land if it reduced TO Dos. or
l0s they will have il at no price, Their minds are
completely made up to go after their friends-to 20
home, that home not being "Ould Ireland" but the
''Far Wcst!" The stream set that way, il
will not stop till Ireland is absolutely depopulated,
and the only question Is, when will that be? Tween
ty years at the present rate would take away the
whole of the industrious classes leaving only the
proprietors and their families, members of the
learned professions, and those whose age inirIn-
tiles keep them at home. What if it should come
to pass that before another twenty years the whole
Celtic shall have disappeared from these isles,
and the problem Of seven centuries received it's
luton?
And when will this movement stop? Injurious
ness and prejudice ready with the reply. that
it will stop, at all events, when the Celtic race Is
exhausted. The Englshman we are assured, is too
attached to his country, and too comfortable at
home, TO cross the Atlantic. But surely II Is very
premature to name any such period for this move
ment, or to say beforehand what English laborers
will do, when seven eight millions of Irish have
led the way TO comfort and independence. The
Englishman is now attached to his own home be
he knows of no other. His ideas of other
regions dark and dismal He trembles at the
thought Of having to grope his way through the
Zimmerman obscurity OF another hemisphere The
Anne
RIGA is, in his mind, fatal bar to locomotion. But
all this is quick passing away. Geography,
union warehouses;, ocean mails, and the daily
sight OF letters arriving in ten days from pros
porous emigrants, fast unrooting the British
rustic from the soil, and giving him cosmo-
politan ideas. In very few years the question
uppermost in his mind will be whether he will be
better off here or there. Whether he should go
with the young and enterprislng, or stay at home
with the old and stupid If quarter of million
British subjects have left THE country for the
Australian colonies in the present generation, there
may easily be much larger movement to q near
er and more wealthy region. 1t has been imagined,
indeed, that such migration will have natural
tendency TO stop itself at certain stage. We are
told that the English laborer will find field in
Ireland, deserted by the Celt 1t will however, cost
more effort of mind to cross the ocean at once
than TO the Irish Channel for land which, in
the English mind must ever be associated with vio
lence and blood. High wages, again we are told, the
enjoyment of liberal government, and an improved
condition, will bind the Englishman afresh to the
soil of his ancestors But when you make the
English laborer richer, independent, more
intelligent, and more of citizen, you have put him
in a condition and temper to seek his fortune,
wherever it may be found. The men who in the
United States leave their homes for the Far West
are generally they who have prospered where they
are, and who want the excitement of another start
in life. On the whole, disposed to think
that the prospect is far too serious to be neglected
or treated as a merely speculative question. The
depopulaton of these isles, supposng the Celtic
cd us out its course, and British exodus TO
follow, constitute about serious political event
as can be conceived; for change of dynasty or
any other political revolution is nothing compared
with change in the people themselves. All the
departments of ndustry-the army, the navy, the
cultivation of the fields, the rent of landed proper
taxes-depend on the people, and without the peo-
pie there must cnsue general collapse of all our
Institutions.