EMIGRATION FROM ENGLAND.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1072, 6 August 1869, Page 3

EMIGRATION FROM ENGLAND.

The Lyttelton Times of the 21st ult. has a very able article on the subject of emigration, in which allusion is made to a speech delivered by Lord Overstone in England, in which he points out that the accumulation of capital was increasing in that country at an enormous yearly ratio, something like £150,000,000 annually, while "the English Government had been compelled to raise the pay of their soldiers in order to secure the necessary quota of recruits annually ; the wages of the agricultural labourer had risen 'within the last twenty years at least twenty-five per cent ; and the wages paid to all classes of skilled artisans had increased in a ratio which, all things considered, was disproportioned to the increase in the profits arising from invested capital," and arguing from this Lord Overstone disapproves of emigration, contending "that England's continued prosperity is only to be secured by a plentiful supply of cheap labour, such a supply, in fact, as will enable the capitalist to make what he terms a reasonable profit." The Times says very justly that these arguments are all on one side, and that the same facts will reasonably yield different deductions, and the conclusion- it arrives at is this- — ** English capitalists, as represented by Lord Overstone, do not desire the emigration of labour, and will do nothing to promote it. Philanthropists, and those on whom the burden of increased poorrates fall the heaviest, the former from a desire to benefit their suffering fellow creatures, and the latter from a natural wish to rid themselves of a vexatious impost, believe that emigration is the only means of permanently accomplishing their several ends. Those who have a material interest in the colonies, and they are now a considerable class in England, may be "expected to further the movement. The English Government and the class from which Governments are usually selected, have to consider how emigration on a large scale would effect the several interests in the' State. It is their duty to decide between capital on the one hand and labour on the other— to say whether the demands of the former shall be complied with in spite of oft-recurring temporary suffering to the latter, whether the great body of those who pay poor rates would be permanently relieved, and. whether the probable degradation of large numbers of the population seriously threatens the internal stability and progress of the country."