Page:Emigration - a paper read at the Burdett Hall, Limehouse.djvu/21

 Your petitioners are fully convinced that the natural and proper remedy for such a state of things is a wise, paternal, and efficient system of emigration to our colonies. God gave the earth to man to be inhabited. While hundreds of thousands in our large cities are in a semi-starving state, contending with each other for labor and bread, there are millions of acres of rich lands in our colonies, untouched by spade or plough, lying waste and unproductive. A wholesome and steady system of emigration from an over-populated country like England, to an under-populated country like Canada, is almost as great an advantage to those who remain at home as to those who emigrate.

There is an impression among labor-masters that an over-stocked labor market is for the advantage of the employer. This was found to be a mistake in Ireland, where low wages and insufficient food so deteriorated the working man, that he was not able to give an equivalent for even the low wages received, to say nothing of the idle habits engendered by the want of regular employment.

Your petitioners hope that your honorable House will take the condition of our laboring classes into your most serious consideration, and provide for their speedy removal to Canada, or some other of the British colonies, either by stimulating the emigration department of our Poor-law machinery to more active operation, or by the adoption of other and more efficient measures; and your memorialists, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

I have not much faith in societies or committees generally, but I feel that the great work of emigration, which will be increasing year by year in magnitude, cannot be done by individual effort, or by the East End Emigration Society. It demands a large and powerful constitution, such as would command the sympathy of the nation, and the support of Parliament,—in the shape of annual grants. The colonies would, of course, give their aid; poor-law guardians would find it their interest to bear a portion—say, a third or a fourth—of the expense of those whom they might recommend to the society for emigration. Such a society could not fail to meet with support from the public generally. I here throw out the rough idea of a great Emigration Society for England, to be brought into shape by those who know more of the subject than I do.