macy of England is her enormous superiority in maritime affairs. A statement of England's carrying power and commerce must necessarily be made up largely of dry statistical facts, but statistics of the ordinary kind utterly fail to convey to the mind an adequate appreciation of England's enormous preponderance in maritime wealth. and prestige. The carrying power of Great Britain on the sea between 1870 and 1880 increased by more than 7,000,000 tons, being exactly 60 per cent. of the total increase of carrying power in the world during that period. The total maritime carrying power of England in 1880 was 48 per cent. of the total carrying power of the world at that date. Put in another way, the carrying power of England per 1000 inhabitants increased from 310 tons in 1870 to 487 tons in 1880, being an increase of 177 tons; while that of France, in the same interval, only increased from 44 to 53 tons per 1000 inhabitants; that of Germany from 34 to 45 tons; that of Russia from 7 to 11 tons; that of Austria from 12 to 14 tons; that of Italy from 37 to 46 tons; that of the United States (at sea only) from 64 to 47 tons.

Still another view may be taken of England's maritime greatness-that, namely, of her port entries, as compared with those of other countries. Between 1869 and 1879, the port entries of this country increased from 17 to 26 million tons, an increase of nine million tons. Within the same period the port entries of English colonies had increased from about 14 to 25 million tons, or about II millions in all. But no other country in the world comes near to these figures, unless it be the United States, which has shown a corresponding development to the exent of about eight million tons. Perhaps a more readily appreciable way of expressing the relative position of England in this regard would be to say, that of the total increase in the port entries of the world between 1870 and 1880, amounting to rather over 50 millions

of tons, about 20 millions of tons, or 40 per cent., belonged to the English Empire.

The disadvantages under which a country must necessarily labour in the absence of efficient means of transport is well illustrated by the case of the Chinese Empire, where railways are as yet all but unknown, and where river navigation is carried on by vessels that are far from equal to their duty. On the Yangtze, for instance, between Ichang and Hankow, a distance of 430 miles, there is a considerable and increasing trade, which is mostly carried on by boats that average nearly a month in the up, and about eight days in the down journey, while a steamer, steaming only eleven knots, could do the distance in three days, and thirty hours respectively. As it is, freights are very much higher than they should be. Cotton pays about 5s. 3d. per bale-about as much as it costs to transport a ton of iron ore from the north of Spain to English ports; while other goods cost about 30s. per ton up freight-the equivalent of the freight of at least three tons of wheat from New York to Liverpool. Passenger freights are equally high. European passengers pay £7, 10s. each way, but the natives, providing their own food and bedding, pay considerably less.

CHAPTER XVIII.

EMIGRATION.

Ir is a vexed and by no means simple problem how far emigration tends to advance the general prosperity of a country. Whether it is to be recommended or discouraged, whether it is to be regarded as a source of weakness, or as a means of acquiring greater strength, must depend upon the circumstances of the country whence emigration takes place. It is not unreasonable to suppose that a country, with an enormous colonial empire like Great Britain, may ultimately become all the stronger for a great wave of emigration, if it passes from the mother country to her dependencies. In such a case every emigrant goes to swell the increasing markets for English manufactures in another part of the world, and his requirements being on a larger scale in his new home, he may contribute more to the wealth of the mother country there than if he had remained within her fold. But on the other hand, emigration is likely to have a rather different result if it should tend towards a foreign country, which aims (as most foreign countries do) at excluding all English manufactures by hostile tariffs. In such a case, the emigrant almost inevitably moulds his opinions and his predilections in accordance with those of his adopted country, with which his future lot is to be bound up, and his interest and object thenceforward is to assist in fighting against the land of his birth, for it has been aptly contended that all hostile tariffs are acts of

war.

Measured, then, by this test, it is highly important to discover whether England has gained or lost by the broad and steady stream of emigration that has within the last half century proceeded outwards from her ports. Since 1820, England (using that term in its largest signification) has had her population depleted to the extent of nearly five and a-half millions by emigration. The movement may, indeed, be said to have begun only with the commencement of the century, and to have grown from year to year, until an annual average of only about. seven and a-half thousand between 1820 and 1830 had swollen to a majestic stream of 160,000 in 1873. How has this great exodus been disposed of? We should like to be able to say that it had, in the main, proceeded to our Australian Colonies, or to Canada; but the truth does not, unfortunately, allow of such a roseate and alluring conclusion. Very considerably more than twothirds of the total number of emigrants from our shores during the last half century have proceeded direct to the United States. Many thousands more, who have gone to Canada in the first instance, have before long left that territory to take up their permanent quarters on the more settled soil of the American Union. The reason is not far to seek. Wages generally take a higher range in the United States, and emigrants who have long been accustomed to the pinch of low wages, are allured by the higher nominal value of the earnings offered there, although that value does not, of course, correspond necessarily with the real worth of the money received as regards purchasing power. It is true that in Canada the settler enters at once upon the possession of political rights and privileges, whereas in the United States these have to be purchased by a certain period of domiciliation; but there is no reason to suppose that this consideration has much weight in determining an emigrant's choice of his destination. His main, if not his only object, is generally to secure the best remuneration for his labour

coincidently with the greatest absence of privation and "roughing it."

It results from the facts just stated that England has not gained as much as she might have done by the emigration of her sons. One-third only, and scarcely that, of all who have sought for a more hospitable home beyond the seas have selected English colonies. To the extent of this proportion England has no doubt been a gainer. Every emigrant who settles in an Australian colony, contributes more or less to the demand for commodities supplied by the mother country, and thus far continues, in another sphere, to promote her material prosperity. But it is quite otherwise with those who have sought an asylum in the United States, and as by far the great majority have done so, the conclusion is forced upon us, however unpalatable it may be, that England has not, on the whole, profited by the transfer.

There is, as is well known, a certain school that holds and seeks to popularise the notion that emigration is in itself an unmixed good to a country which, like England, possesses a redundant population that is constantly tending to press on the means of subsistence. This, however, is by no means so obvious as it is made to appear. In a general way, it is not the waifs and strays. of the population who seek to better their lot in another land. The courage and endurance, the ambition, and the determination to succeed, which are the conditions precedent to emigration, are among the highest qualities that a people can possess. It is those who possess these qualities that leave us; it is those who lack them that remain behind to swell the already large and unwelcome crowd of our pauper and criminal population. And it is not quite a comforting reflection that the possessors of qualities so desirable bear them away very largely, not to that Greater Britain beyond the seas, where they would still be used in a wider and more congenial sphere for England's benefit, but to a country which, in matters of