The emigration during the last year, 1851, has not yet been made up; but the following extract from the Times of October 20, 1851, shows that the number this year will be at least 320,000-being probably the greatest exodus recorded of mankind since Moses led the children of Israel across the Red Sea, and far exceeding anything narrated in a similar period of the Goths and Vandals. INCREASE OF POPULATION.-"While 150,584 children were born and registered in the summer quarter, 91,600 persons died; leaving an excess of 58,984 in the population. The excess of births over deaths in the first nine months of the present year has been 170,411, which is probably more than equivalent to the actual increase of the population. "It is well known that, up to a late period, there has been a constant immigration of the Irish and Scotch into England, which appears to have been fully equivalent to the emigration of the English into the colonies and to foreign parts; but no exact statistical information on this subject exists. "85,603 emigrants left the ports of the United Kingdom at which there are Government emigration offices, in the quarter ending September 30, 1851. This is at the rate of 930 a-day; 6510 a-week. 13,963 sailed from Irish ports, 4378 from Glasgow and Greenock, and 67,262 from three English ports-namely, 10,062 from London, 2799 from Plymouth, and 54,401 from Liverpool. Many of the Irish emigrants are returned at Liverpool. Of the total number, 68,960 emigrants sailed to the United States, 9268 to British North America, 6097 to the Australian colonies, and 1278 to other places. The emigration has hitherto been greater in 1851 than it was in the corresponding quarters of 1850. "The present movement of the population is in many respects remarkable. The free admission of grain, fruit, and meat since the scarcity, is equivalent to an addition to the country of a vast tract of fertile soil, which calls for cultivators, and, as the land is abroad, for agricultural emigrants who prefer the cheap, though distant lands of America, to the high-rented farms of Ireland, no longer possessing a monopoly for its produce in the English market. The fact deserves attention, that, while the United Kingdom has been importing food in unprecedented quantities, it has been sending out swarms of emigrants from the population, of which the marriages and births promise to keep up a perpetual and increasing supply."— Times, Oct. 10, 1951. That this marvellous migration is not on the decline, but rather the reverse, may be gathered from the following accounts from the same journal of its progress at the commencement of winter: though winter is now fairly set in, and thus early there is a prospect of its being a severe season, the flight of the people proceeds almost as generally as it did during the months of spring and summer. The arrivals of emigrants in Dublin do not appear to be quite so numerous, yet the leading shipbrokers find it difficult enough to provide accommodation for the applicants for passage who swarm the offices along the quays and docks here. A respectable medical practitioner in the metropolis and his numerous family were among last week's departures for New York; and, if report speaks truly, next year will witness the exodus of no inconsiderable body of the members of another profession, that of the law, the business of which has declined, and must still further decline, to a point at which it would be hopeless to expect that provision could be made for one-fourth of the persons who had heretofore derived a competence from this fast-fading branch of Irish resources. Speaking of the flight from the south, the Tipperary Free Press says'The emigration of the people has progressed, and is progressing, to an awful extent. On Thursday over sixty carloads of peasants, from the counties of Tipperary and Kilkenny, arrived at Waterford to take shipping for Liverpool en route to America. In most instances they appeared of the better class, and were well and comfortably clothed. A singular fact is, that among them were several old men and women, who were going doubtless to join their children in the land of freedom!"-Times, Nov. 12, 1851. THE EMIGRATION MOVEMENT.—“ Al The cause of this extraordinary movement, which is now exciting, as well it may, SO much attention throughout the country, is so well stated by that able journal the Standard, that we cannot do better than give it in its own words : "One large and important limb is wasting away in a confirmed atrophy. Ireland (to drop the language of metaphor) presents to the political economists such evidence of the failure of their scheme as it would seem almost impossible for any man to resist-a fertile soil untilled, a sturdy and hard-working race unemployed. The Irish peasant hastens across the Atlantic to dig and plough, because in America he can hope to be paid for ploughing and digging. They who employ him can hope to make profit of his labour by selling the produce of it. Is not the fertility of the Irish soil so much national capital wasted, if we buy from France and America what Ireland can produce? The abandonment of this national capital involves the expenditure of capital, too, in another way. They who do not find employment in the field must be fed in the workhouse. In other portions of the empire the effect of the untaxed import system may be discovered; but in Ireland it thrusts itself under our ployment, go to the workhouse or starve. It is painful to think of what the country must come to if this extraordinary flight of our industrious taxes to be paid, the interest of debt, population continues. How are the public or private, provided for, the poor maintained, if a vast army of 300,000 of our best inhabitants, most of them in the prime of life, annually leaves our shores, being at the rate of about a thousand every week-day, leaving all the paupers, orphans, and widows behind, to be provided for by the real proprietors who cannot get away. We already have about 800,000 of that burdensome class in England alone, besides 400,000 in Ireland and Scotland, and they never emigrate, because they have no money to do so. Let those say how that class is to be maintained who are driving the industrious class, who have hitherto done so, headlong out of the country. notice. The effect there is immediate, visible, and direct. Its population earned its subsistence by raising agricultural produce to be disposed of in the home market. We have gone to a cheaper workman, and given our custom to the peasant-proprietor of France and the farmer of the Mississippi. What, then, is the Irish peasant to do? Even Manchester will not pretend that the whole population of the island is to take to spinning cotton. The markets of the world do not require a fresh supply. That the population must be idle if there is nothing for There is one very curious effect which them to do, is tolerably clear; that they must follow from this frightful flight must be fed or allowed to starve, is no of the industrious population that has less obvious; so that under the influence not hitherto been observed, but which of the Manchester policy we witness this must ere long attract general attenremarkable development of political saga- tion, from the absorption of manufac city-that a fertile territory is left unculturing profit which it must occasion. tivated, and an industrious population is held in enforced idleness, and maintained at the cost of those who have saved some capital wherewith to maintain them." Standard, Oct. 5, 1851. The emigration movement is not confined to Ireland. Go into any village, even in the eastern counties of England or Scotland, and you will find that a continual drain of the very best inhabitants is going forward. In the small village of Staindrop, at the gate of Raby in Durham, fifty-six of the very best inhabitants emigrated during the last summer. From the smaller village of Hovingham, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, fifty went off in the same period. It is the same wherever you go in Great Britain. Not only are great numbers of the inhabitants constantly emigrating, bat the class who do so are the very best of the community-the industrious, the thrifty, the well-doing. The reason is obvious. They are the only ones who can get away; the poor cannot, but must, when thrown out of em This is the scarcity which must soon take place in the supply of young and healthy laborers from the country to carry on the various branches of manufacturing industry. Every one knows that not one of our great towns can maintain its own numbers, such is the mortality, especially among children under five years of age, which obtains in those huge receptacles of impure air, impure morals, and crowded habitations. It is by a constant influx of persons from the healthy districts of the country, that not only is this increase provided for, but even their numbers kept up. But how is this stream to be supplied, if the country districts from which it is at present supplied are themselves depopulated? Already the scarcity of labour has become such in several districts of Ireland, that wages have risen from 6d. to 1s. a-day; and such was the diminution of the usual influx of Irish labourers, which has for long passed over to Great Britain during harvest, that great difficulty was experienced tous distribution of grain from the Imperial granaries was the mode in which a certain portion of it came to be borne by the public treasury. In Ireland, the same effect has already taken place. The last census showed, that, while the population of every county, without one single exception, has receded, and the total decrease was, in the last ten years, 1,560,000 souls, the population of all the towns, without one single exception, had increased. The reason is obvious: starvation and ruin drove the pea santry from the country into them. The same effect is taking place at this moment in all our great towns: in getting in the crops in many parts of Great Britain. Hitherto the want of hands has not been so much experienced in our manufacturing towns, because the multitude of persons who have been thrown out of employment in the country by Free-Trade measures, and flocked into the great towns in quest of subsistence, has supplied the labour market. But that supply cannot be permanently relied on; and it is not from decayed paupers and destitute old men or children flying from the workhouse behind them, that an adequate supply of hands can be supplied to our manufactures. Thus the results will be, that, while Free-Trade will reduce to one-half the number of paupers and burden the home market, by halving the remuneration of rural industry, it will as much, in the end, contract the foreign, by raising the price of the labour by which the fabrics are produced. Was this what the Manchester school intended to bring about by their Free-Trade system? A memorable instance of the way in which, under the just administration of an all-wise Providence, the devices of the selfish and the grasping are made to recoil on their own heads, and they fall into the pit which they themselves have dug. One thing is very clear, and goes far to explain many of the peculiarities in our social situation, which are justly regarded as most alarming. This is, that the labourers who are thrown out of employment by the cessation of demand for their industry in the country, and have not money wherewithal to emigrate, will almost all flock to the great towns. It is there alone that they can hope to find the chance of employment, or the certainty of charity or succour, legal or voluntary. This, accordingly, took place during the whole decline of the Roman Empire. The more that the country districts were ruined and depopulated by the cessation of all demands for grain crops, from the effects of the vast importation of foreign grain into their great towns, the greater was the influx of persons from the rural districts into them, and the more did the numerical amount of their inhabitants increase. The burden soon became too great to be borne by their own local resources alone; and the gratui of the poor-rates in them is every day becoming more intolerable; and so well is that known, and so severely is it felt, that great numbers of the more respectable classes of merchants and tradespeople, even in our greatest and most flourishing manufactur ing towns, are taking houses in the country, to avoid the insupportable weight of rates and taxes with which town residences are attended. Take as examples Manchester and Glasgow, our two greatest manufacturing cities, from which the FreeTrade policy has mainly emanated, and where its most strenuous supporters are to be found. Take them, too, in a year of general and boasted manufacturing prosperity, when provisions were cheap, exports brisk, and the working classes, generally speaking, in comfortable circumstances. From the report lately published of the Guardians of the Poor, it appears that, in the Union of Manchester, the number and cost of the poor for the year ending— of £14, 1s. 5d., as compared with the corresponding week of last year; and, in that of the 17th inst., there is an increase of 272 cases, at an increased cost of £42, 18s. 11d., as compared with the corresponding week of last year, showing an increase on the increased state of pauperism of last year's report." It is not surprising that this great increase in paupers has taken place even during a period when the price of provisions has been constantly falling, and, therefore, the cost of their maintenance should be diminished instead of being increased: for the following extract from Mr. English's letter, of November 24, 1851, shows how the remuneration, obtained during this boasted period of Free-Trade prosperity by the staple branches of industry, has declined :— "In the year 1844-5, the sum of £1, 9s. was paid for weaving forty rounds of plush; the price now is 19s. 6d., and work is difficult to procure at that price; the quantity named being the average produced per individual in a fortnight, the loss in wages is 4s. 9d. per week to each person so employed: and for weaving what is termed a chenie, thirty-eight yards long, 7s. 6d. was paid about six weeks since; the price is now reduced to 5s.; fifty yards being the average produced in a week by each weaver, the loss of wages in this case appears at about 6d. per day's work to each person so employed." ."-The Home, p. 251. So much for Manchester. Now, in regard to Glasgow, the northern emporium of Free-Trade, the poorrates of the city and suburbs to 1845 was about £20,000 a-year. So rapid, however, has been the progress of parochial burdens since FreeTrade and its consequent boasted prosperity was established, that the sum expended on the poor in the three parishes of Glasgow, Barony of Glasgow, and Gorbals, forming the total of the city, is now about £110,000 a-year; and it is kept down to that level only by the most strenuous efforts in all the parochial boards to reduce the number of recipients of public relief. This immense sum, exceeding what is paid by Glasgow for the income-tax, is provided for by an assessment on real property of 12 per cent. within the parish of Glasgow, and an income-tax in the Barony parish, where the greater part of the wealthy inhabitants of Glasgow reside, of 3 per cent. These assessments, the sad bequest of Free-Trade to the very part of the country for whose benefit the whole system was intended, are felt as so oppressive, that every inhabitant of Glasgow knows they seriously menace its prosperity, and, if they continue, may threaten the existence of our manufacturing establishments; and they have given rise to a "war to the knife between the different classes of society, each striving, by getting the mode of assessment changed, to throw the burden off themselves upon their neighbours; so that, after having distracted the community for three years, the struggle has at last risen to such a height as to call for legislative interference. When such have been the effects of Free-Trade in those very emporiums of manufacturing industry for whose benefit the whole system was devised, it may be conceived what it has proved to the remainder of the community. There cannot be a stronger proof of the woeful results it has thus produced, than is founded on the arguments which the ablest FreeTrade organ, the Times, has founded on the general Poor-law Return for the last year. The Times quotes with triumph the following return:— Comparative Statement, showing the Number of Amount of Money Expended for Inmaintenance and Out-door Relief in 607 Unions, &c., in England and Wales, during the years ending Michaelmas, 1850 and 1851. * In-maintenance consists of the cost of food, clothing and necessaries supplied to the poor in the workhouse. Out-relief consists of relief in money and kind, together with relief by way of loan (if any) to the out-door poor. This decrease of 18,691 persons in a year of alleged general prosperity, out of above 800,000, and this decrease of five per cent in the expenditure in a year of unprecedented cheapness, is a source of unbounded congratulation to the Times. They forget to add, that in nine months of a year in which the paupers in England decreased 18,000, no less than 270,000 persons emigrated from Ireland alone, and of course proportionably took the pressure of pauperism off Great Britain; and that the total emigration from the British Islands was above 320,000! They say nothing of the fact that in a year in which five per cent was saved on out-door relief in England—that is, in the purchase of food, or money for its purchase at least ten per cent was saved by the fall in the price of provisions. They are thankful for small mercies. Nothing can be clearer than that the state of the poor, coupled with the enormous and unprecedented amount of the emigration, and low price of provisions, in reality indicates a great increase of distress in the labouring classes. Had it been otherwise, the number of paupers would have decreased at least 100,000, and the expenditure twelve or fifteen per cent. So much has been said lately of the decline of cur shipping in consequence of the repeal of the Navigation Laws, that it is enough to refer to the following table to show in how disastrous a manner Free Trade has acted upon that important branch of the national industry, as stated in the Economist itself: From the returns of shipping published by the Board of Trade in October 1851, it appears that between October 1849 and October 1851, British monthly tonnage had decreased from Ships monthly decreased from On the nine months from 1st October 1849 to 1st October 1851, the British ships had declined from Tonnage. 220 to 339, and from 58,995 to 92,026 44,199 to 78,135 135,309 to 261,111 96,315 to 248,728 485,116 to 625,143 481 to 1,167, ours has, so far from increasing, been declining. It is easy to see that under this system the foreign shipping employed in carrying on our traffic |