Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/185

Rh EMIGRATION 175 wherever a steamer plies or a hammer sounds on the sea- washed surface of the globe. To complete this sketch it must be added that the Chinese the most numerous while the most isolated nationality in the world have also become emigrants in large numbers, though it may be doubted whether the Chinese immigration to the Pacific coast of the United States has as its object a permanent change of country, or differs yet at least essentially from the coolie migrations from India and China to the Eastern Archipelago, or of South Sea Islanders to Queensland and other parts of Australia, which are more of the nature of a transfer of labour for a term of years than a definite emigration of both sexes and of families. The number of Chinese in the United States, according to the census of 1870, was 63,199, and in the Australian colony of Victoria at the same period 17,935 in both cases nearly all males. In an elaborate report on coolie emigration from India by Mr Geoghegan, presented to parliament in 1874, it appears to take Ceylon as an example that in the ten years ending 1869 the average annual number of persons removing from Madras to that island was 65,000 (of whom 50,000 were adult males), and that the average annual number who re turned from Ceylon to Madras was 48,000. A constant coming and going is the feature of all coolie emigration, whether from India or from China. The Chinese have a superstitious desire to die within the borders of their own sacred land. Nevertheless, their strong and persistent move ment to the Western world is a significant phenomenon. It has broken through all restraints at home, and it has held its ground, in the face of no little social hostility, from San Francisco to New York and other cities on the Atlantic seaboard. Foreign and colonial emigration, in short, is now so widely practised, and has been rendered by improved means of transit so safe and expeditious, that its continued progress is not only sure, but one may foresee, from the various forces in play, that at no distant time it will have become, over the largest portion of the world, as familiar as migration from one province of the same country to another. The attitude and duties of states, and of the populations of states, towards a movement which comes into contact at many points with existing laws and interests laws of naturalization, military conscription, and allegiance, with asserted rights of labour, and with social, religious, and international prejudices have thus become questions of much importance. Nothing is more certain than that nearly all the old countries suffered in past times from want of emigration, unless it be that all the new countries have greatly benefited by it. Leaving China out of view, where foreign immigrants have only been tolerated under treaties ex torted by force of arms, there has been a general approval of emigration on the one hand, and of immigration on the other. In the United Kingdom the population are singu larly free to choose either their own country or its colonies or other countries as the place of their abode. They are under no compulsory military service ; and emigration has been actively encouraged by societies and protected by the Government for half a century. The greatest obstacle to free emigration from the Continent would appear to be the system of military conscription. Every German of twenty or twenty-one years is liable to per sonal service in the standing army for seven years three of active service, four in the reserve and to other five years in the landwehr, with the landsturm behind the landwehr making further demands on the time and liberty of the subject. In France a similar system is now enforced, though under more liberal exemptions. It is but fair. to state that Germany, exclusive of Prussia, has up to this time been sufficiently free in its emigration to have sent to ths United States from 1820 to 1870 not fewer than 2,267,500 persons, which is nearly as many as have gone from Ireland to the United States in the same half century, viz., 2,700,493. But from Prussia, where the conscription has been longest in rigorous operation, the number of emigrants to the United States in the same period has been only 100,983, and from France 245,812. Though the conscription may not be the sole cause of this, yet the demands made by the great military powers on the drilling and fighting services of the whole youth and man hood of their populations are obviously obstructive to the pursuit of industry and fortune in foreign countries or in colonies. These demands may be relaxed from time to time, while the system itself is maintained ; but they are relaxed with a grudge, and the Governments acquire inordinate ideas of the irrevocable allegiance of their sub jects. If the latter are permitted to emigrate, it is under condition of being liable to recall on brief notice to the standards of their country; and an armed truce, such as has prevailed in the most civilized nations of the Continent of Europe during five or six years of peace, might soon be as detrimental to free emigration as war itself, under which it usually ceases for the time. From Russia none can emigrate without permission of the czar; and a similar despotism over the subject is the rule of the Ottoman empire. A state may be within its reasonable and proper line of duty in promoting and aiding either emigration or immigration. But that the permission of the state should be necessary to the one process or the other is inconceivable, save in some rare and dire emergencies of war or politics. The duty of states in regard to emigration, viewed in what must now be the generally accepted light of a necessary and wholesome function of the general economy, thus resolves itself into a duty of regulation and guardian ship under the two categories, always presented, of the countries which the emigrants leave, and the countries to which they go. The one are bound to see that emigrant ships are well found and not overcrowded, and that adequate arrangements are made for the provisioning, health, and safety of the passengers in their transit ; while the other are bound to give them shelter and guidance on landing, to protect them from imposture, and to see that all pre-engagements made with them be fulfilled. The commission of emigration in the United Kingdom, early established as a branch of the colonial office, has laboured diligently in introducing care and order into the sphere of foreign and colonial emigration, as well as into the coolie immigration of the Eastern seas. The regulations in the British home and colonial ports are embodied in two Acts of Parliament, called the Passengers Acts 1855 and 1863, which contain the administrative code on this subject in its statutory detail only for &quot; Commissioners of Emigra tion &quot; must now be read &quot; Board of Trade,&quot; the supervision of emigrant ships having devolved on that department in connection with the general merchant shipping. Of the regulations for the reception of immigrants, on the other hand, the arrangements at New York afford probably one of the best examples. If no country has had more to do with the shipping of emigrants than the United Kingdom, no place has had more to do with their reception than the great American seaport; and measures have been adopted there by which the abuses once prevailing have been over come, and at the same time all the arrangements for the com fort, security, and guidance of immigrants have been placed on a satisfactory basis. Emigrant ships are visited six nnles from the port by health officers, and any who may be sick or diseased are removed to hospitals under the care of the commissioners of emigration or the quarantine commission. The others are required to land at Castle Garden, where there is a large rotunda capable of accommodating 4000