Page:Effects of emigration; can it be made a means of relieving distress?.pdf/2

 country could not be the work of a day, and so emigration presented itself as the immediate remedy.

The principle of emigration may be briefly stated. An individual and his family find that a new country affords a more prosperous field for their industry than their own, and accordingly they choose to sever the ties of home and kindred, and to become exiles for the sake of bettering their condition. The attractions of home institutions and home connexions are so powerful, that a strong motive alone (either in the form of great necessity at home or great prospects abroad) can induce them to such an undertaking. Here, however, as in other parts of economic science, there is a perfect identity of individual and public interest. The emigrant and his family who improve their condition abroad confer a double advantage on the country they have left. It is obvious how great the advantage is to a commercial people like ourselves, to meet in distant parts of the world with men of our own race, of the same language, living under similar institutions, and governed by nearly the same laws. Commerce is much facilitated by being carried on with countries which differ from ours only in soil and climate. The productions of America reach us not only at a cheaper rate, but in a much more convenient manner, by their being procured from British and Irish settlers, than if they were produced and sold to us by persons of a less civilized class. Not only in this way does the emigrant profit his country; but also, by diminishing at home the existing pressure of population against food, his fellow-countrymen have fewer competitors for employment, and find the avenues to the various trades and avocations less choked up by needy applicants. When some of the trees are removed from the crowded forest, those that remain thrive better by having freer air and a more extensive soil. The voluntary exile in a similar manner profits his remaining countrymen. This removal to a more favorable field of industry resembles the abandoning of an old and decaying trade for one more prosperous and thriving. The old statutes of apprenticeship often entailed ruin on the tradesman, by preventing his entering as a competitor into a new employment when the one he had long pursued failed. Modern science has shown the evil as well as injustice of such regulations, and points out the fair as well as profitable course in such a case, viz. to leave him at liberty to seek a new employment. In like manner, when a country or a city does not afford the industrious a fit and proper field for their industry, the just as well as expedient course is, that their industry should be transferred to those lands or towns that do offer such an opening. The intending emigrant (when with determined heart he adopts this course that naturally occurs to him) is following the conclusions of science, and in time will feel his breast warm with noble and kindly feelings:—

Having seen that in certain circumstances emigration is a course