Page:Emigration - a paper read at the Burdett Hall, Limehouse.djvu/20

14 they had not been able to do for many a long day before. Wages had been so reduced, that they were unable to purchase a manufactured article; they could purchase nothing but the cheapest food. But after the famine, and the great emigration that followed it, the smaller number who remained in the country proved better customers to the grocers, butchers, and drapers than the larger number before the famine; for wages rose from sixpence to one-and-sixpence a day.

The removal of a fair and reasonable number of our present unemployed workmen to the backwoods of Canada would give a stimulus to many branches of our trade in England. The workman would be able to procure there, in exchange for food, which he sends here, many articles which he cannot reach at this side of the Atlantic. Here he may make them, but he cannot wear them—illustrating the old maxim, that "the shoemaker's or cobbler's wife is the worst shod woman in the parish."

I recommend Canada to the emigrant—first, because it is easily reached—in about ten days—by steam; secondly, because it holds out the surest prospect of employment; thirdly, because there is there a machinery in operation for directing and aiding emigrants in procuring employment; and, fourthly, because it is loyal and true to England. "It is only of late years," observes the Rev. Mr. Hill, in his ' Poor Mans Emigration Guide to Canada, ' "that people in England have come to know or care anything about a province, which has not inappropriately been termed the brightest of the colonial jewels in the British crown."

"But how are we to get there?" inquires the poor, half-starved laborer in the East of London.

Petition Parliament. Let your petitions be numerously signed and you will succeed. If Parliament sees that you are in earnest, they will be in earnest in aiding you. I would recommend the following form of petition to Parliament:—

The humble petition of the undersigned, the inhabitants of Poplar, Limehouse, and the Isle of Dogs, humbly sheweth, that, for the last two years, there has been a great dearth of employment in the above-mentioned districts, and in the East of London generally; that an increasing dearth of employment, although not to the same extent, prevails throughout the whole of England. Your petitioners are of opinion that the English labor market is becoming over-stocked; that the enterprise and operations of the country are not keeping pace with the increase of the population; and that, if efficient means be not adopted to meet this growing evil, the laboring classes will become deteriorated, and that a chronic state of pauperism will intervene which cannot fail to paralyse the industrious operations of the country.