XI. Why are our People Unwilling to Emigrate

(Murray 's Magazine, 1887.)

Is it true that the people of the United Kingdom, or of England chiefly, are unwilling to venture abroad? This is a question to which our whole history for cen turies has seemed to give a peremptory no. The settlement of the American plantations; the creation of the New England States; the peopling of the West India Islands; the occupation of Canada, Australia, South Aftica, to say nothing of the half-million who govern the Indian Empire: all these unequalled enterprises of the British and Celtic races place the United Kingdom at the head of all the colonising peoples of the world. Nevertheless, there is at this day a reluctance in our people to rise up and to fare forth into lands beyond the sea. This vis inertice has no doubt always existed, even when our great historical adventurers and colonisers were leading out the first fathers of our Colonial population. There was then a majority who looked on in wonder at the daring and hardihood of those who left them behind. This will also be true now, but this is not the question we have to meet. Is there, as it is affirmed, a special reluctance at this moment, more than at other times, in our people to leave their mother country? There are reasons to believe this to be true; VOL. m. p and these reasons are partly inherent in all people, and partly resulting from causes which need not and ought not to exist. We will try to weigh both, but our chief care is to examine these latter causes which ought to be removed: for we are responsible for their removal.

Though there is no people in the world more mari time and adventurous than the people on the seaboard of England, Ireland, and Scotland, there is no people more rooted in their homes than the midland population of these islands, especially of England. The Teutonic love of home prevails over the Scandinavian love of the sea. Our Saxon forefathers were not seafaring. Three sea-voyages were a qualification for an earldom. There is no doubt that the love of home is deep-rooted in the English people. Nothing more beautiful and peaceful can be found than a homestead of the midland and southern counties: a thatched cottage, with creepers on the wall; a garden with roses and lilies, apple-trees and a cherry-tree, a bed of potatoes and lettuce, and often a corner sown with wheat. Such homes as these, half a century ago, were the freehold and the heirloom of a ploughman or a shepherd, who could remember his father and mother by the bright peat fire, and has seen his own children playing on the threshold. It is no wonder that men and women should shrink from going out from all that holds their hearts so fast. These homes are, indeed, passing away, but they still exist. There is, however, a reverse of this picture. For long years one-third of the people have congregated in our cities and towns, many of them in hovels not fit for human habitation; families overcrowding single rooms with all the human miseries of such inhuman state. We should have thought that they would have readily risen up in the hope of a better shelter; but, strange to say, the vis inertias is still strong; and they cling even to the sufferings which have become a second nature. Add to this, the love of their mother country, which is a part of natural piety, with the love of kindred and friends. These are bonds fast enough to bind strong men or to hinder their spirit of venture. In the Irish race the love of the very land on which they were born, and in which they would fain be buried, is so tender, that when they leave it they will carry with them some handfuls of its earth to be laid with them in their graves.

Another restraining cause is a fear of the unknown: the perils by land and sea, with all the toil and priva tions of journeys and voyages. They have been so long patient under their lot, that they shrink from the chances of any change. And to this is to be added the uncertainty of success in an unknown land, and in an untried lot. They have already a hard task to deal with and to master in the difficulties of their daily struggle for bread, and what will they be able to do in a new state, which they do not know, and for which they have never been trained? They have had full experience of the uncertainties of their past life which they can measure and meet; but the future in an untried lot they can neither measure nor forecast. They will have to begin life over again, leaving behind them all the investments that they have laid up in the goodwill and confidence of those among whom they have grown up to manhood. It may be also that they have entered into middle life: and to make a new launch is a great venture in which many have sunk. All these uncertainties would weigh with a man who is alone in the world, and has no one to care for but himself. How much weightier they be come when he has wife and children, and perhaps a father or mother, depending upon him!

There remains one other reason, very powerful in its effects. If the people have cause to think that there exists in any quarter a desire to clear them off the face of their mother country, every instinct of manhood and of natural independence rises up to rivet them to the soil, in which.they have an inalienable right to so much as will give them burial. We need not dwell on this point. It must be stated lest it should be forgotten, and when stated, it will not be forgotten as a law of natural justice before which human laws must hold their peace.

So much, then, for the reasons and causes which make our people unwilling to venture abroad.

We will now turn to see hew far this unwillingness has prevailed. Notwithstanding all the restraining motives hitherto enumerated, there has been a steady and strong yearly stream of emigration from England, Ireland, and Scotland. In the last thirty years 3,000,000 have left our shores. From the last Return of the Board of Trade, published by Mr. Giffen, it appears that the number of British-born subjects who left our shores in the first three months of 1886 was 80,700; in 1887, 44,446, that is, 14,000 more than in rH CO "^ CO O COCO O rH co

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0? a l'-2 a i the previous year. Again, 44,000 in all left this country, and of these 30,000 went to the United States. We must be glad that our people should find a home in the United States, and the growing number of English-born who mingle with the population of the States will be, we may trust, a growing security for the amity and unity of the two countries. Nevertheless, it must obviously be our desire that our people should find their homo within the bounds of our own lands. One of the aims of the movement in behalf of State-directed colon isation is to guide the stream of emigration into our own channel, and to retain our brethren still as subjects with us of the British Empire.

In his Report to the Board of Trade, Mr. Giffen pointed out that the emigrants who succeed in the Colonies powerfully attract those whom they have left at home; emigrants follow emigrants, they attract each other. Each new settler draws to him others from the " mother country." Mr. Maguire, in his work on the Irish in America, has given large evidence on this point. The multitudes who went to the United States during the famine fever of 1847 drew after them an immense following; and vast sums of money were transmitted to Ireland to bring parents or kinsmen over the Atlantic. The reasons in this case were no doubt exceptional, and specially constraining; but the same attraction has been found to exist not in Ireland only, but in England and in Scotland. A foreign land loses its strangeness and distance when parents or children have already made it their home. The more this attraction is strengthened by larger emigration, the less powerful will become the restraints which keep men at home. It is certain that the spirit of adventure and of courage which animated our forefathers when the New World was first opened has become dormant among us. And yet England of that day was large enough for its population of five or six millions. There was then room enough for all and to spare. We are now crowded to excess. Our population grows by nearly 400,000 every year: our four seas are inexorable in their blockade. It is, therefore, a dictate of natural prudence to encourage this attractive power of our Colonies, and to enlarge the range of its influence. And, further, so to direct it that the manhood and energy, the intelligence and the skill, of our race shall not wander beyond our bounds; but shall expand the mother country and build up our commerce and empire. In the year 1886, 232,900 persons of British origin left our shores; but the annual growth of the population, as shown by the census, in Great Britain is nearly double that number. Every year, therefore, the pressure of population on our narrow surface is becoming more serious. It is affirmed that in the agricultural counties of England 75,000 are born every year, or three-quarters of a million in ten years. For these there is no employment, and it is computed that of them 600,000 go into the manufacturing and mining counties, or into London and its suburbs. So that not more than 150,000 go beyond sea.

No doubt want of will to leave the country is a powerful obstacle, but it is certain that want of means keeps at home many that would be willing to go. And this also explains why so many go to the United States. The voyage is shorter and cheaper. Excepting only Canada, our Colonies are distant and the sea-passage is dear.

Evidence has been given from all parts of the United Kingdom during the last five or six years showing beyond doubt that very large numbers of our working population have been from time to time only occasion ally employed, or altogether and for long periods of time out of employ. This is disputed every year as to London; but though loose statements may exaggerate the case, it is undeniable that large numbers suffer from want of work for weeks and for months. But it must be borne in mind that want of work for a day is loss of wages, and loss of wages is loss of food for many mouths. It is easy to be stoical when suffering does not touch us. The life of those who live by toil is more than from hand to mouth, for when the hand is idle for a day, the mouth is empty. Mr. Alfred Simmonds, President of the Kent and Sussex Labourers' Union, in a pamphlet three years ago, has shown how fallacious are statistics on the alleged decrease of pauperism. He says: " Attention has been directed to the Poor Law Returns. Lord Derby has publicly exhibited the figures, and has claimed that, there being a considerable decrease in the number of persona receiving parish relief, the inference must be drawn that the poor are better off than heretofore. Under ordinary circumstances this would be so. As a matter of fact, the direct contrary is the case at the present moment. The decrease of pauperism, as sliown by the figures, means a terrible increase of poverty and starvation. Let us see. Let us take the Returns of Pauper ism for the decade 1872 to 1882. In 1871-2 the old Poor Law Board issued repeated orders to the Boards of Guardians to be more stringent in granting outdoor relief. When the Local Government Board superseded the Poor Law Board, the new authority continued the crusade against outdoor relief, and still do so. In lieu of outdoor relief the ' order for the house ' is given — the ' house test ' applied. Large numbers of poverty-stricken families prefer their rags, their own over crowded room, with its killing atmosphere, their misery, their independence, rather than enter the workhouse. I sympathise with them. I would do the same myself. It is not to be assumed that I am advocating indiscriminate outdoor relief, but observe the operation of the ' house test.' In 1872 there were in England and Wales 977,400 paupers, namely, 154,000 indoor and 823,000 outdoor. The figures have changed. In 1882 there were in England and Wales 797,000 paupers, namely, 188,000 indoor and 609,000 outdoor. Showing a decrease of 214,000 outdoor; but an increase of no less than 34,000 indoor paupers. Regard these figures in the light of the ' house test ' policy, make full allowance for attempted imposition, and who would voluntarily imagine the mass of concealed heart-breaking, the hopeless misery represented by the decrease of outdoor paupers?"

The number of indoor paupers has steadily increased since 1882. The Poor Law Returns for 1885 show that the number of indoor poor had increased up to that time to an excess of 40,000 beyond the number of indoor poor in 1872.

But it must not be thought that the Poor Law Returns give any adequate measure of the poverty of our population. They exhibit only the helpless and hopeless state of nearly a million of our people who are ready to perish. But these are not the kind of whom emigrants or colonists are made. No colony could redeem them: no colony would receive them: nor would the mother country be guilty of deporting them to die abroad. There are, however, other classes among whom the severest poverty is found. And it may be without fear asserted that there is a larger number throughout the country who periodically suffer the extremes of poverty. A rational and commendable pride, which is self-respect and a sense of honest independence, forbid their applying to a relieving officer. The Royal Commision on Education in 1860 divided the poor into the dependent poor, and the independent poor. The dependent were in workhouses, prisons, and other public institutions. The independent poor comprised all others who live by " work and wages." But of these, excepting only a few who can lay by, such as the un married or the childless, it is strictly true to say that they live always, even in full work, upon the brink of poverty. A sickness, an accident, the bankruptcy of a master, a bad harvest, a cotton famine, illness in the family, vicissitudes in trade, and changes without end, may at any moment throw them out of work, and even if by thrift they have laid by a little, a few weeks will exhaust it. This will include three whole classes.

1. Artisans with all their skill. 2. Small tradesmen ruined by co-operative competition, or by the failure of their customers — that is, of workmen out of work. 3. And both of these classes when they have sunk to the state of precarious and transient or casual employment.

These three classes are steadily sinking into extreme poverty, and many even into pauperism. Between poverty and pauperism there is a broad difference. The best of men and the best of families may sink into extreme poverty, but they can only become paupers through their own vice, or through the house test, which relieves a family only on the condition of breaking up its home, and, with it, all hope of recovery. Men driven by their own misery and the misery of those dear to them are the prey of demagogues. The three classes before described are not paupers, and ought never to sink into pauperism; nor, with exceptions, would they ever become paupers if a wise and adequate help were promptly given to them. They might become efficient and thriving colonists, if there were at home and abroad a public spirit which is watchful over the people and cares for the prosperity of the Commonwealth. But public spirit is rare and low in these days of self-indulgence.

One of the most distinguished of the Colonial representatives reproached us the other day by the following contrasts. He said: "We in Australia know everything that happens in England." Such was the substance of his words. " We sedulously read your many newspapers, and we know the details of every thing that passes. You never see our newspapers, and you know nothing of us. In this there ought to he a reciprocity of knowledge and of sympathy. We feel ourselves to he unknown and out of mind."

If the upper classes, who have all the means of know ledge, know so little of the Colonies, is it a wonder that the people know less? How, then, should they dream of what they do not know? They seek work till they are weary, and ask help till it is exhausted: they turn their hands to everything that they can find till they can find no more. But the thought of a new land, a new home, a new beginning, with a new future of work and hope, is beyond the horizon of their daily wants and cares. It is not their fault. How should they think of that of which they have never heard, of which even those above them so little know?

The Colonial Governments have done something to diffuse knowledge among the people at home. But still, how few have knowledge certain and detailed enough to move them to any serious thought of such a venture? The Imperial Exhibition of last year; the presence of so many of the chief men of our Colonies, the statesmen, governors, prime ministers, judges, and merchants; and the Colonial Conference of this year, have done much to rouse attention and inquiry.

It must, however, be said to the honour of some of our self-governing Colonies that they have done much in the last ten years. Canada, New Zealand, Queensland, New South Wales have voted, and advanced in loans, large sums of money to enable people to migrate from England to their soil. Between 1873 and 1883 many thousands accepted this aid. But now, Canada alone

Continues this assistance. The others have practically ceased. New Zealand and the principal Australian Colonies used to grant free or assisted ocean-passages. Multitudes availed themselves of this help. And even since this help has been withdrawn, the offices of the -Colonial Agents in this country have been beset by working people anxious to go to the Colonies. Queens land still grants free passages to farm-labourers, and to women domestic servants under stringent regulations as to age and fitness. The office of the Agent-General is so pressed by applications that for some months to come no more can be admitted.

Mr. Simmonds, already quoted, is now Secretary of the State-directed Colonisation Society, and from him the statistics here given are derived. He has been long engaged in the work of emigration. As secretary of the State-directed Colonisation movement, he has been enabled to send out 11,000 of our working people in the ten years between 1873 and 1882. And since the Colonial Governments discontinued the granting of free ocean-passages, though he has been compelled to give public notice that they were no longer granted, nevertheless he computed the number of persons wishing to leave England for our Colonies at nearly 10,000. He believes also that if the Government at home and the Governments of the Colonies would join hands in a system of State-directed Colonisation, 50,000 applications would at once come in.

The causes, then, which make people unwilling to go over the sea will never be overcome except by a fuller knowledge of the state of the Colonies, and of those who settle in them; nor, again, until, by wise co operation between the mother country and the Colonies, the means of transit and of settlement shall have been secured to those who are willing to go.

It will be seen that by State-directed colonisation is not meant the transporting of individuals singly as adventurers without mutual relations, and without provision made for them in the land whither they are going; nor, again, is it proposed that this shall be done by grants of public money, but by loans and by commercial enterprise. Societies some time ago were willing to convey families to Canada, to build a dwelling on land granted by the Canadian Government, and even to cultivate a portion of the land for the first year's subsistence at a rate so moderate that the loan could be easily paid off. What Juvenal says of honesty may be said of State-directed colonisation, " Probitas laudatur et alget." Everybody praises honesty, but leaves it out in the cold. Everybody commends colonisation, but declares it to be financially impossible. And so it will be until Government at home and over sea shall take it resolutely in hand.

That what has been said may not end in vagueness, it will be well to set down precisely the scheme of State-directed colonisation which was submitted to Lord Granville, then Colonial Secretary, and by him referred to the Local Government Board.

1. The Imperial Government to create a per manent Colonisation Board; the representatives in London of co-operating Colonies to sit ex officio on the Board. The Colonisation Board to be responsible to H.M.'s Secretary for the Colonies.

2. The Imperial Government ta provide the necessary funds by way of loan.

3 The Co-operating Colonies to place in the hands of the Colonisation Board tracts of Government lands for colonisation purposes.

4. The people proceeding to the Colonies to be classed as (1) emigrants or (2) emigrant colonists. The former class to be sent only where labour is known to be in demand; the latter class to be planted on the lands in the hands of the Colonisation Board.

5. Pioneer parties of single-men emigrants to be sent under contract to clear and prepare lands, build dwellings, &c., for the emigrant colonists to follow after.

6. The emigrant colonists to undertake to repay by annual instalments the cost of their settlement, with interest.

7. The Colonial Governments to nominate experienced Colonists to act, for a time, as resident superintendents of settlements, and to establish in each settlement a post-office and money-receiving house for the reception of repayments, with power to enforce payments due if necessary.

8. Food stores to be provided during the early stages of the settlement under the superintendent; advances to be made to settlers until the arrival and sale of first crops.

V

9. The Colonial Governments to reserve sites in each settlement for public buildings and trades.

10. No person to be sent without the approval of the representative of the Colony concerned.

11. The Colonisation Board and its operations to be kept distinct from Boards of Guardians, and from all contact with pauperism.

12. Colonies desiring labour only, to make special contract with the Colonisation Board.

13. Each Colony to be invited by the Home Government to work with the Colonisation Board, especially in respect to shipping and other like interests.

This scheme is now under careful examination. On the llth of February last a meeting was held, which resulted in the formation of two Committees, one of members of the House of Lords, the other of members of the House of Commons. All political or party character was carefully excluded from the treatment of this question by the selection of secretaries from each side of the two Houses, namely, Lord Longford and Lord Monkswell for the Lords, and Mr. Lawson and Mr. Seton-Karr for the Commons. These Committees have been working both apart and in confidence.

We have no need to prove the benefit that would result to the country, both at home and abroad; to the development of the Colonies and of the Imperial commerce; to the consolidation of the Empire by bonds and sympathies stronger than all federations. All this is admitted even by the objectors who dwell on the financial impossibilities. A hundred years ago, who would have believed the creation of the British Empire to be possible? When once some such Colonisation Board shall have formed its relations with the Colonial Government, the unwillingness of our people to go abroad by reason of want of knowledge, want of means, want of advice, want of help, want of the plain, practical, and direct facilities of such a venture, will be over come. For the existence of these obstructions we are all responsible, and shall be so long as we go on coldly objecting to every plan, and magnifying the financial difficulties. When once these causes are removed, the people will be found prompt and glad to venture, as were our forefathers, into lands which are no longer strange and wild to them, but their mother country still, and a home beyond the sea.

XII. OUK NATIONAL VICE.

(Fortnightly Review, 1886.)

OUE NATIONAL VICE.

Our nation has a multitude of vices. Is there any vice that cannot be charged against us? But is there one vice that is head and shoulders above all others? Is there one that, by its stature and its sway, dominates over all around it? We have lately had comparative statistics from Italy, showing the proportion of murders, assaults with intent to kill, immoralities, commercial frauds, and the like. Under the first three heads England is comparatively innocent. But commercial frauds would thus seem to dominate. Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his Essay on Commercial Morals, seems to confirm this charge. We are, however, plunging into the democratic period, and have become of late profusely and shamefully factious. But as yet faction does not dominate over our other vices, or over our patriotism. We are told that under the crust of our national Christianity there lie unimaginable depths of immorality and unbelief; nevertheless it cannot be said that this, or any of these, or all of them together, constitute our national vice. Let us, therefore, test this matter by a series of questions.

I. Is there, then, any one dominant vice of our nation? To answer this let us ask:

1. Is there any vice in the United Kingdom that