VICTORIA.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume IX, Issue 801, 6 April 1853, Page 3

VICTORIA.

Thi Conriquxncm o» Emigration. — It is a remarkable feet, that the English journals are. already commencing to speculate upon thJ serious evils to be apprehended from excessive emigration. The Times gives a series of articles on the subject* one of which we copied in our summary of English news received by the Melbourne. A later paper just come to hand supplies us with the following statistical facts : — "We have been at (Tome pains to collect data from the most authentic sources with a view to ascertain the extent to which emigration has proceeded during the present year ; and the statistics we have procured certainly display a train of facts for which we were scarcely prepared, and which we are sure our readers will consider at once curious and startling. In the nine months from the Ist January to the 30th September last, the total emigration from the United Kindom to the United States, British America, and Australia, by Government and private ships, amounted to 302,172, showing an increase of upwards of 60,000 over the same period of the previous year, and of about 140,000 over the emigration of 1848. In the aggregate of the present year to which we refer, 203,732 are included as proceeding to the United

States, 31,666 to Canada, and 66,774 to Australia ; the most remarkable feature in the emigration to the latter part of the world being, not only its excess above previous years, but the number who departed by private ships, and which, we find, amounted to 41,805 ; the number who proceeded in ships chartered by Emigration Commissioners, at the expense of colonial funds being 94,269. Nothing can demonstrate the effects of the gold mania more forcibly than the fact to which we refer, as exhibited in the increased number who since January last, paid their own passages to Australia, the average private emigration during the last four or five years not having amounted to much more than 2,000, being in a proportion of one-twentieth of the private emigration of the present year. In the great exodus which has taken place to the United States and our own colonies, upwards of 170.000 souls have departed from Liverpool alone; about 16,000 proceeding from Glasgow, and J4.000 from all ports in Ireland. In 1847 the total Australian emigration was 4451 in eight months of the year ; from which it increased to 19,164 in 1851 ; until now it has more than tripled in amount; and there appears every likelihood of the augmentation proceeding in the same proportion so long at least as gold furnishes an inducement to Australian —Argv*., , I

emigration." | Important News if true .-—A gentleman on board the Alexander from the Mauritus, (and we believe the owner,) reports that just at the time of the vessel's departure from Port Louis, news had been received, by way of Point de Galle, of the safety of Sir John Franklin and the Arctic Expedition. It was stated that he was at Santa Barbara, on the south-west coast of North America, with the ships Erebus and Terror, and their respective crews, who had suffered much from scurvy. We give the report as it reached us, and can only add, that we shall be too happy to publish a confirmation of it. — M. M. Herald, 17th Feb.