EMIGRATION. (From the Colonial Church Chronicle.)

New Zealander, Volume 5, Issue 407, 9 March 1850, Page 3

EMIGRATION. (From the Colonial Church Chronicle.)

It is stated by the Emigration Commissioners that in tha first four months of 1847, 90,714 emigrants left the ihorei of this country ; in the same period of 1848, 74,929 ; and in the same period of the present year (1849), 104,701 have gone out— the total emigration for the year 1825 to 1848 having reached the enormous amount of 1,985,686 persons. This of itself is a population for no mean state ; it is enough to constitute a kingdom that could hold iti place in the European family. It ii a wonderful outpouring from' the teeming hive of Great Britain and her Irish iisterland, It may be said, is a larger emigration requisite

—can. the stream be expected to pour forth its living wateri more rapidly? I answer yes;—so long as boundless tracts of fertile lands in our colonies ask only hands to till them, and hundreds of thousands at home ask for a field for theip energies, and the opportunity of earning their bread, which is denied them. in our crowded fields and factories it is desirable to give further impulse to emigration., and increase its stream. How, then, is it to be done-*-for there lies the difficulty. It appears by the Poor-Law Boards' returns that the total number of poor who received parochial relief in the year 1347-8 was, in

But the Commissioners tell us, in a note to their; Report, " that it appears from Mr. Lumley's evidence before a. Select Committee of the House of Lords in 1847, that in the ten years from 183 ft to 1846 inclusive, about 14,000 persons emigrated from England and Wales, at the expense of parishes, and at a cost of £80,000 or £90,000: that is to say, the parishes of England found it worth their while to send out about 14,000 emigrants annually, at a cost of about £6 a head. These facts appear to shew that however the disposition to assist emigration may have increased during the last few years, parish assistance could not, as a rule, be relied on when an annual emigration of 18,000 persons was in question. The cost of conveyance of emigrants to our Australian colonies is stated by the Commissioners to amount on the average to about £14 per statute adult, and the remaining expenses of deposit or bed-money, outfit and cost of conveyance to the port of embarkation. I are roughly averaged by them at£s ahead—thus making the total expense of an adult emigrant to Australia, about i?l9. They tell us, however, that it has long been possible to send an emigrant to Ca» nada or the United States for £6, and at present thei cost is not more than £4 10s., and it is likely to diminish rather than increase. Thus there is a Urge difference in the expense of emigiation to the United States or Canada, and the expense of it to our Australian colonies, the effect of which is shown by the result of the last ten years' emigration, during which period 740,000 emigrants have gone out to the United States, and but 100,754 to our Australian colonies— though of course it is to Australia, and not to the United States, that it is important to Great Britain to send her people. Now, we may assume that the cost of this large emigration to the United States was derived from pri* vate sources, except a portion of the sum of £80,000 or £90,000, contributed out of poor rates, which wa« perhaps expended in sending parties there. None of. it could have come from a land-fund. Of the Austra* Han [emigration, on the other hand, a large proportion has been paid out of the land-fund of the colonies, in the bands ot the Commissioners, some perhaps by the parishes and gome from private resources.. Still, the benefit of emigration being three-fold—first, to the emigrant; second, to the colony ; and thirdly, to the Mother-country: it appears evident from the above facts that the Mother-country has not performed her part in the matter, and does not at present appreciate, her share in its advantages. If the poor-rates of Eng-. land and Wales amounted in 1847-8 to £6,180,765, we may safely assume them to have amounted in the aggregate, in the ten years from 1836 to 1846 (the period during which the parishes have spent the £80,000 or £90,000 before mentioned on emigration) to fifty-five millions or thereabouts. Can it then be believed that that small amount of £80,000 or £90,000 is all which it would have answered to the English, parishes themselves to spend on emigration out of that fifty-five millions ? It cannot be so: We must conclude that there has been some short-sightedness and want of information, or of public spirit, which has led to so little being done by the parishes of EBgland to relieve themselves by emigration. We have seen that the cost of pqupers per head in England, is returned by the Poor-Law Board at £3 ss. 10£ d. This, it must be remembered, is the annual cost. The Poor Law Board should tell us what is the cost in a series of years of each habitual pauper—rof each constant inmate of a workhouse; what is the probable cost of each demoralized family which, col* Itctively and individually, promises to be a burden on the parish rates for the natural lives of all its mem« bers, and perhaps of the next generation. We should then be able to judge to what extent the opportunity of at once relieving themselves and benefiting the colonies, by means of emigration, has been thrown away by our parishes.

French Literature.— From the Utof January, 1840 to the Ist of August, 1849, the French preis baa produced 87,000 new works nnd pamphlets, 3700 re impressions of old works and French and Latin classics, and more than 4000 volumes translated from modern languages. About a third of the lafter are from the English, and the remainder from the German and Spanish. The Portugueie and Swedish languages are those which have furnished the leait to translators. Nine hundred dramatic authors have been named for pieces represented, and afterwards printed, and only sixty for oomedies or dramas which have not been played. There have been published in this period I 200 works on the occult sciences, the cabal, chiromancy, necromancy, &c, and 75 volumes oh heraldry and genealogy. The social science, Fourierism, Communism and Socialism, of all schools, reckons more than 20,000 works of all sizes, 6000 romances and novels, and more than 800 voyages and travels. According to the calculations of M. Didot, more paper has been used in these different works than would have twice covered the surface of the 86 department! of France. — Galignani. Tub National Debt.— After thirty-four yean of comparative prosperity, and we may say of profound peace, but' little has been done to diminish the enormous load of debt which had accumulated at the close of the war. In 1793 the whole amount of the National Debt, funded and unfunded, £261,735,059 ; in 1822 it had increased to £637,000,000 ; and in 1816 to no lets than £885,186,323. In twenty-tbree years, therefore, the sum of £6 13,45 1,264 was added to the amount of our National Debt. On the sth January, in the present year, the amount of the funded debt of the United Kingdom was £774,022,638, and the unfunded debt on the same day amounted to (€23,770,211, making a total of £7^7,792,849. So that whilst the debt increased during twenty-thres years of war by £613,451,274, it has been reduced in thiity-four years of peace, by only £87,493,474 ; even including all the terminable annuities which have fallen in during that prriod.— Economist. The Scientific Society of Lille has proposed a gold medal of the value of 300 f. to be awarded in 1851 for the first Temperance Society which shall be established in one of the cantons of the arrondissement of Lille, similar to those existing iv America, England, and Ireland,"- CrflftiMffm'.

England, 1,876,541, at a cojt of ,£6,180,765 Ireland, 1,457,104, ... 1,216,679 Scotland, 227,649, ... 544,334 And the average expenditure per head was— In England £3 5 10£ In Ireland ... .» 0 16 8| In Scotland .. „ 2 7 9}