WHAT EMIGRATION HAS DONE FOR ENGLAND.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 166, 24 May 1859, Page 4

WHAT EMIGRATION HAS DONE FOR ENGLAND.

The general report of the Commissioners of Emigration, laid by the English Government before Parliament towards the close of last session, has now been published. This document, of a high political and commercial importance, contains points full of interest, the. principal of which we desire to bring under the eyes of our readers. From^lßls to 1857, in 43 years, the British Isles have. seen go forth from them as many as 4,683,194 emigrants The number furnished in 1815, the lowest of all,'was 2081 souls; that of 1852, the most numerous, 366,764 souls. Since 1846 the annual number has never been

under 129,000 emigrants.; Of the total of. 4,683,194 emigrants, 2,830,687 have gone to settle in the United States; 1,170,342 to Canada and the neighboring countriescomprised under the generic name of British North America. We must also ob- / serve, in passing, that since. 1851 Irish emigration has undergone a marked decrease, evidently due to the superior condi- . tion of the peasantry remaining on the soil, ~ brought about by the departure of an enor- . mous number of emigrants. Let us pause a moment on the facts and figures which we have just mentioned. The population of Great Britain (England, Scotland, and Ireland united) was, in 1851 after an official census, about twenty-seven millions and a-half. Since 1851 the population of Great Britain has augmented considerably, and we believe that recent documents set. it down at close upon thirty millions of in- , habitants. This detail is somewhat important as one that shows that a large emigration, far from being incompatable with a considerable augmentation of the population, seems, on the contrary, actually a powerful stimulant to that increase. Now, let us suppose that these 4,683,194 emigrants had remained in the land were they were born; one of two things would then have happened. Either the British population would not have received any increase, and would be still at the, figure,; showing a slight excess upon 30 millions, or else four millions and a half would have to be added. In the first case, England would, toall ' appearance, have neither gained, nor.lost by the suppression of emigration.. We say . to all appearance t for we hold, on the contrary, that she would in reality have lost considerably. And is it nothing that-these 4,683,194 persons have since 1815, carried into every corner of the habitable globe the name, the tongue, aud the manners of Old England,—planting where they have gone an Anglo-Saxon race, amounting probably " at this moment to ten millions of souls ? Emigrants quitting England, even without' any hope of return thereto, have carried away, as it were on the soles of their shoes, if not the material soil, at all, events that moral soil, that country ' (Patrie) which is composed of those ideas, .manners,. and customs which to. a foreigner make an Englishman always an Englishman, even when he tries to be something else.—Qourrier du Havre.