phlet points out, "is that of their own prospects. All however, that they can discern is an Immigration agent, and Immigration. Societies, ready to plant them on wild land, or amongst the farmers; and minor places of information and aid, that are themselves institutions of benevolence or even of charity. This, to the new population flowing in, is a cause of deep, if not lasting, anxiety. They have heard that they were wanted, that there was room for them, nay more, that prosperity awaited them, but the exact opening for the individual, who is all the world to himself, is not so easily seen." And then he proceeds to draw a picture, the correctness of which every one will at once recognize:-"Now the truth is, all the while, that employers exist here in abundance, farmers are restrained from cultivating the lands they possess for want of able and willing hands, and in almost all departments of industry commonly found in cities there is room for more, and many manufactures would spring up and flourish if the qualified skill could be found. The two great classes, the employer and the worker, the two great elements, capital and labour, are side by side, but they so exist as masses and in that state cannot combine; there is a process required of dividing and sorting and distributing; the ironfounder who needs moulders cannot in their place receive dry-goods clerks or printers, nor can the proprieter of a newspaper, who requires compositors, accept a ploughman or a shepherd, nor the farmer thrive with the aid of working jewellers and cotton spinners. Political economists write about supply and demand adjusting each other mutually, as though such things were fluid, and by some law of nature flowed together and became level. This doctrine will only be realised as a truth when the supply and demand become cognizant of each other, not in mass but in minute detail, for thus and thus only do they ever flow together and neutralize and satisfy each other; and to accomplish this great result is the object we have in view." Although this is absolutely true, the promotion of public works in a new country like this is the most important incentive to immigration. It is curious to note the movements of population during different periods of the last quarter of a century. The ten years from 1847 to 1857 inclusive, were years of great activity in Canada. They saw the Great Western and the Grand Trunk Railways, the Northern and a considerable portion of what is to-day the Midland, indeed all the railways excepting those to which the last four years have given birth, spring into existence. They were years of great activity in the United States as well; and they witnessed the discovery of the gold mines of Australia and the consequent rush of emigration to that far off dependency of the Empire. Those ten years, therefore saw an enormous emigration leave the United Kingdom. It averaged over three hundred thousand annually; but Canada receivnext ten years the aggregate emigration fell ed, as its proportion 11.42 per cent. The off considerably, reaching an average of only about one hundred and seventy-five thousand each year. These were years, during which scarcely any public works were prosecuted in Canada, and the result is appar ent in the falling off of the proportion of the aggregate emigration, which came to our shores, the percentage of this smaller aggregate being but 8 10 per cent. It is impossible to attribute this falling off to want of zeal on the part of the Government. Undoubtedly greater zeal would have produced during the whole twenty years a more grati fying result. But there was as much effort during the latter as during the former decade. It was due simply to the fact that there was no employment, that is no em ployment for gangs of men, visible to the emigrant on his arrival, and the Government had provided no system of registration of the ..... Wellington, Grey & Bruce—Harris- Pembroke.... 532 107,000 32 64,000 .151 400, 550 .... 45 119,250 47 94,000 68 136,000 46,000 12 48,000 labour wants of the country, so as to coun- prosper dred and seventy-two thousand, the per- Toronto & Nipissing—Uxbridge to ville and Harriston.... Total... Belleville and 6722 42,000 44,000 This latter fact $1,507, 300 All these railways are assisted by large local subsidies, and for the first time in the history of railway enterprises in Canada by large subscriptions to their share capital from private individuals. is important as showing on the part of merchants and private capitalists an increased confidence in the permanent prosperity of the country. Nor is railway enterprise by any means confined to the Province of Ontario. In New Brunswick a private company, subsidized by a liberal land grant from the Governments of that Province and of Quebec, has undertaken the construction of a railway from Rivière du Loup to St. John. In Quebec, the North Shore Railway, between Quebec and Montreal has just been placed under contract, and work will, it is authoritatively stated, be commenced during the present season. The Northern Colonization Railway from Montreal to Ottawa, there connecting with the Canada Central, which has recently received a decided impulse by the accession of Sir Hugh Allan as its President, will also be commenced this year. While in the eastern townships of the Province, a perfect net-work of railways are projected, with such influential backing as to justify the belief that they will be prosecuted without delay. These are all private 132,000 projects, the result of individual and muni cipal enterprise. But there are to be added to them the Intercolonial Railway, which, for the next two years, will afford employment to a large number of labourers, and the Canada Pacific railway, to the completion of of both of which the faith of the Government of Canada stands pledged. These railways do not simply afford employment to labourers during the progress of their construction, they open up new districts, and make remote ones more accessible, as permanent homes for the labourers after their completion. Thus, in this new country, the railway and the settlement aid each other; the former giving comfort and wealth to the latter, and the latter affording traffic for the for mer. Let any one travel through the splendid counties of North Wellington, North Huron and Bruce, counties opened up for settlement about the time the construction of the Grand Trunk and Great Western Railways invited the emigrant to Canada by affording him assurance of employment on his arrival, and he will find abundant proof of the fact that the navvy who works on the railway becomes ultimately the permanent settler in the country. Farmers by the score in those counties, with their well cultivated and well stocked farms, with their comfortable homesteads and well filled granaries, and some of them with investments in their own municipal securities, came to Canada twenty years ago to work on the railways, and carried the savings of their days' wages to the backwoods where they hewed out for themselves the competence which they now enjoy. Their lot, gratifying as it is, viewed simply as illustrative of the results of emigration, was a hard one compared with that of the emigrant of to-day and of the future. In spite of the splendid district in which they settled, they remained for nearly a score of years without the advantages of a railway: are in fact only this year coming into the enjoyment of those advantages. We live fortunately in a different atmosphere. The railway may now be said to be the pioneer of the settler; so that the navvy working upon it, can take up his lot within a few miles of a station, and start in his career with all the advantages which his less fortunate brother, the emigrant of twenty yearsago, had to wait many weary years to obtain. In the railways projected and under construction we have therefore at once the warrant for a vigorous policy for the encouragement of immigration, and the assurance that the unofficial agency in the hands of the emigrant, will be used in our favour. And when to these is added the other public works which are projected by the Government, such as the enlargement of the canals, bringing with them employment for the labourer, and the greater development of every industry in the country, it is surely not too much to claim that, at this moment, if the Government will only organize a thorough system of internal agency and of labour registration, we have the justification for encouraging emigrants to come to our shores, and the ability to furnish them with employment and with assured prosperity when they arrive here. There would be smaller grounds for encouragement in the labour of inducing emigration to Canada, but for the fact that the recent acquisition of the North-west territory opens up illimitable fields for settlement, and affords within our own territory the outlet for that inevitable hankering after western homes, which has done so much to build up the western states of America, far more than any special intrinsic advantages possessed by those states themselves. 66 A great west" has been the practical difficulty for years in the way of a successful policy of emigration. In spite of the advantages which this country presented, in common with the neighbouring republic, and in spite of the political advantages, to British subjects in particular, which it offered in excess of those offered by the neighbour Arkansas, .... .196,080 | Michigan, 303,582 .195,835 Minnesota, 78,863 154, 307 Mississippi, 145,239 38,549 Missouri, 428,222 .676,250 Oregon, 30,474 455,719 Texas, .224,345 376,081 California, Wisconsin, .250,410 82,562 Dist. of Columbia, 25,079 73,722 Territories,... ... 76, 201 Census Commissioners the entire number from British America is stated at rather un of course, not confined to native British Americans. It includes all who, after a residence of a few months or years in this unfair is the use made of the fact of this country, emigrated to the States. Yet how emigration will be apparent when it is remembered that seven states of the Union, all of them having the reputation of being tolerably prosperous states, had up to 1860 lost a larger native population by emigration ing republic, undoubtedly many have emi- Alabama, grated to the west after a residence of a few years in Canada. Every such case has been cited as proof that the country possessed no inducements for settlers; and this argument has been made use of to our prejudice. In a debate which recently took place in the British House of Commons on the subject of emigration, Sir Charles Dilke, availing himself of the exaggerated reports of the efflux of people from Canada to the States, made the startling assertion that the emigration from Canada was annually greater than the emigration to it. To those who had read the young Baronet's "Greater Britain," the statement, coming from him, was possider a quarter of a million. This number is, bly not very surprising; but when challenged to the proof of his assertion afterwards, he was compelled to abandon the controversy. Still it is impossible to overestimate the mischief that has been done in consequence of the reports to which this emigration of Canadians to the States has emigration of Canadians to the States has given rise. An examination of the principle of emigration within the United States themselves is the best answer to the arguments which have been based upon the presence of British Americans among our American neighbours. The details of the census of 1870 have not yet been published in such detail as to enable us to examine them on this point; but those of 1860 are sufficient for the purpose. By them it appears that of the native born population, leaving out of account altogether the migrations of the population of foreign birth, who after a residence of a year or two in one state removed to another, no less than 5,774,443 persons had removed from the state in which they were born. The migrations were almost exclusively to the western states, as the following table will show, the states being those which had up to that time received a larger number of persons born in other states of the Union than they had lost of persons born within their own limits: than British America had lost of native and foreign as well. The seven states were, North Carolina, 272,606; Ohio, 593,043; Louisiana, 331,904; New York, 867,032; Pennsylvania, 582,512; Tennessee, 344,765; Virginia, 399,700. With the exception of New York, all these states are greatly inferior in population to British America, so that the proportion of persons emigrating from them is much greater. Even the states which a few years ago were regarded as the far western states, the very paradise for the emigrant seeking a western home, have lost largely by migration to new states still further west. New York, in the short period of ten years, 1850 to 1860, lost no less than 332,750 of its native population, and Ohio in the same time 358,748. When the alleged emigration from Canada, even accepting the figures of American statists, is contrasted with this internal emigration Britisher" will not be a ground of dislike and opposition, but a ground of sympathy and respect. Thus, with an abundance of information circulated among the emigrating classes in the old world; with public works in progress affording employment to the hardhanded emigrant on his arrival; with local and central agencies giving to the new comer protection and advice; with a perfect system of labour registration which will supply the means of placing in employment the skilled mechanic, the artizan and the agricultural labourer; and finally, with a great west affording the outlet for those to whom the place of the setting sun has special claims. with these, and with free institutions honestly and fairly administered, we may look forward with confidence to our ability to secure a larger share of those whom straitened circumstances or a love of adventure prompt to seek homes on this continent. among the people of the United States themselves, the argument that it proves Canada an unfit country to live in, must surely vanish. It proves that we are not free from the spirit of unrest which is a special characteristic of the people of this continent; that our young men, like the young men of America generally, have imbibed the roving disposition, and are constantly looking out for the far off hills, which are proverbially the greenest. But it proves further that we have this spirit in a less developed state, and that Canada possesses a greater hold upon its population than does any one of the states of the neighbouring Republic. The mere statement of the emigration of Canadians to the United States makes us suffer in the estimation of the emigrating classes, because it points to a loss of nationality, and is therefore more marked. But this national tie has its restraining in- I have but one word more to add. If we fluence as well; and to it are we indebted would achieve success in the new work for the favourable contrast which emigration which saw its inauguration day on the 1st of from Canada presents when compared with July, 1867, we must cultivate a spirit of migration from any of the older states. self confidence and self reliance. The curse With a great west of our own, this emigra- of Canada has been the tone of depreciation tion will cease, and migration will take its in which its own sons have been too apt to place. Instead of the departure of young, speak of it. If we would have a nation vigorous blood being regarded with regret, worthy of the name, we want a nationa. it will be hailed, as it is already in its incipi- spirit wherewith to build it up. Faith is ent stages being hailed, as evidence of greater wanted to create nations as well as to redevelopment and of increasing prosperity. move mountains. Let us have faith: faith The emigrant from the United Kingdom in the country itself; faith in its resources; will find himself here, with every variety of faith in our power to develop them ; faith in soil and every class of industry; among a the institutions we possess ; and faith in the people not alien, but kindred in blood and destiny that is before us. The Anglo-Saxon sympathy; owning allegiance to the same and Celtic races which have been planted great empire, and welcoming as a fellow sub- on this northern half of this great continent ject of that empire the new comer. He will have surely a destiny to work out. Let us escape, what many a British workman has be true to that destiny and we may look the had to suffer in the workshops of the United future in the face with the utmost confidence States, the taunts and jeers at the nationali- | in the blessings which it has in store for us ty on which he prides himself, and the as a people. allegiance he holds most dear. To be "a |