ENGLISH LAND LAWS AND EMIGRATION.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1585, 19 March 1879, Page 4

ENGLISH LAND LAWS AND EMIGRATION.

The following is an extract from a recent address by Lord Derby :

We may probably have changes in the land laws within the next few years, but though they may lead to more careful and profitable cultivation of the soil, they are very unlikely to lead to a larger number of persons being employed upon it. Tho small freeholder and the very small occupier have never held their own in England any more than the handloom weaver against tho competition of the powerloom. I think it will be so still. For my my part I think the future will in that respect be like the past, but many people take a different view, and to them I say the experiment is very easily tried. There are plenty of acres to be had and plenty of owners willing to sell; let tho.-e who have faith in what is called "peasant proprietorship" go into the market, form a company, buy land and divide it into lots of the siae they think most suitable. If they fail to find purchasers we shall know that the supposed demand does not exist; if they succeed, they will have drme useful service; and in any case they will hifve practically tested the soundness ef a theory that has never yet been either verified or refuted. Though Ido not hold that there is much of an opening for working men on the land at home, I do not say the same of land elsewhere. I think it is a very fair question whether in this little island of ours we are not getting packed too closely, and whether we have not suffered from the comparative stoppage of emigration in the last few years. Emigration is for a people like ours a natural and even a necessary outlet. You may pass what laws you please, you may lighten the burden of taxation, until the working men are practically exempt; but as long as there are more of them than can get work, and as long as two men are looking after one employer, neither votes nor freedom from taxes, nor anything else that politicians oan do, nor yet any expedient of their own for producing artificial scarcity of labor in special employments, will in the long run prevent them from being badly off. lam not contending that any of you should start for the New World without inquiry as to the chances when you get thore. Just now the Americans have their troubles as well as ourselves j but with their boundless soil they are rapidly accumulating capital, and with their exceptional energy they are sure to rally before long, and, indeed, I believe the rally has already begun. There are children living who will probably seo the United States numbering 200 millions of inhabitants, and I do not think there is any subject to which leaders of working men can more usefully turn their attention than the supplying to those who want it here accurate and trustworthy intelligence as to their chances beyond the Atlantic, either north or south of the Canadian boundary line. We shall always have men enough left at home, and even if emigration were to go to the length of checking the increase here, which it almost certainly will, it is better to havo thirtv-five millions of human beings leading useful and intelligent lives than forty millions struggling painfully for a bare subsistence. [Hear, near, and cjieers.] There are many persons, I know, who will object on the ground that though emigration may bo good for the individual it weakens the State. I oannot take that view. A contented people goes a long way towards making a State powerful, and I have always been convinced that a great deal of our freedom from international trouble in this country, whioh we sometimes ascribe to national character and sometimes to our political, constitution, is really due to the various outlets which both in past and present times we have created for ourselves beyond sea. They are our safety-valves, and if they get ohoked I should expeot the result to be uncomfortable.