gress has been achieved. The great NorthWest Territory, with its magnificent stretches of prairie land, and British Columbia, with its varied resources of mineral and agricultural wealth, have been incorporated with the Dominion. The Intercolonial Railway, connecting Halifax with the Western Provinces, will be completed within two years at the furthest, and the Government stands pledged to the construction of the Pacific Railway within the next ten years. In every Province of the Dominion the utmost activity in matters of public improvement prevails; new railways extending into remote settlements, and into districts which cannot yet be dignified by that name, have been projected or are being built; while the Government is credited with the most liberal intentions in the matter of canal and river improvements.

With so much activity in every department of business and of public enterprise, and with immense districts awaiting the advent of the hardy settler, it is not surprising that the subject of immigration occupies today the foremost rank in the popular estimate of the necessities of the future, and that schemes for the promotion of immigration fill the columns of our daily press. The rapid development of the United States is due chiefly to their successful efforts in the encouragement of immigration; and so universally is this fact recognized that statists have reduced almost to a mathematical problem the value of each immigrant who settles in the country. One of the New York Emigration Commissioners, whose conclusions have been generally accepted as just, has estimated that, without immigration, the population of the neighbouring republic today would be under ten millions, while in fact it reaches nearly thirty-nine millions. The same authority estimates that the cash capital in possession of immigrants, on their arrival in the United States, averages a hundred dollars per head; and he assumes that the economic value of each immigrant is

$1,125, making, at the present rates of immigration, an addition to the wealth of the country equal to at least a million dollars a day. In Canada, unfortunately, this great interest has in the past been too much neglected. At occasional intervals, beginning with the immigration under the auspices of Peter Robertson, in 1830, there have been efforts to direct the stream of immigration to these colonies, but no continuous or sustained effort has ever been made. As a consequence, Canada, as a field for immigration, has been but little known in Great Britain, and still less known on the continent of Europe; and we have seen during the past twenty years emigrants by the thousand settling in the neighbouring republic, many of them actually passing through Canadian territory on their way there, most of whom would have infinitely preferred remaining among people with whom, both politically and socially, they have greater sympathy.

An examination of the emigration returns of the United Kingdom affords some curious illustrations of the course of emigration. In the report of the Imperial Emigration Commissioners for 1870, the volume of emigration for each year from 1815 is given, distinguishing those who emigrated to Canada, the United States, the Australian Colonies and New Zealand, and all other places. From 1815 down to 1840, the emigration to the North American Colonies was greater than to all other countries combined, and some eighty-two thousand more than to the United States. Indeed, down to 1847, the year of the great Irish emigration, when the terrible ship fever added its terrors to the other miseries of the unfortunate fugitives from a cruel starvation, the relative numbers who had emigrated to Canada and the United States were nearly equal, being 746,163 to the former, and 780,048 to the latter. From that time, however, the most marked change commenced, and from 1847 to 1870 inclusive the numbers were 645,608 to Canada, and 3,692,624 to the United States.

During the last period the Australian Colonies became large competitors for the emigration from the United Kingdom. The first emigration to Australia was in 1825, and in 1870 the aggregate number who had left Great Britain for those Colonies was 988,423, of whom 764,081 have emigrated since 1847. to that of the three great fields for emigration, during the last twenty-five years, British America has, in the aggregate, absorbed the smallest number. And if the numbers of those set down as having emigrated to British America, who simply took the Canadian route to reach the Western States, be taken into account, the difference will show us in a still more unfavourable light. These figures are important, because they indicate how much has been lost to Canada by the neglect of this important interest in the past, and how much may be gained by a vigorous policy in relation to it in the future. We propose to point out briefly some of the conditions of success in such a policy.

The chief reservoir from which emigrants may be drawn to Canada, and the place therefore where the most active exertions should be put forth in the interest of immigration, is the United Kingdom. The supply of emigrants to be found there is literally inexhaustible. During the last ten years the number who have left for new fields of enterprize, was 1,571,729. But the increase of population during the same period was 2,525,637, so that, even making all allowance for the increased demand for labour in the Mother Country, the supply of the emigrating class is essentially greater than it was at the commencement of the decade. The number of emigrants from both England and Scotland has shown a decided increase during late years, the number who emigrated from England in 1870 having been greater than during any previous year on record, as much as fifteen per cent. greater than the emigration of 1854, which up to 1870 had headed the list. The number of emigrants from Scotland, too, exhib

its a marked increase, while that from Ireland does not differ essentially from the preceding few years. The increase in England is due to several causes, chief among which was, probably, the active exertions of charitable associations in London. These, organized in the first instance with a view of sending out the very poor who had come upon the parish for relief, finally adopted the more sensible method of making a careful selection of such persons as were likely to succeed in the Dominion, as at once more just to the emigrant and to this country. The "Black Friday" of May, 1866, and the crisis which followed, may be regarded as the commencement and the stimulant of this movement for assisted emigration. The leading society is that known as the British and Colonial Fund, which is presided over by the Lord Mayor and holds its meetings at the Mansion House. This society since its foundation has expended upwards of £40,000 sterling, and has assisted more than fifteen thousand emigrants to reach Canada. Associations of workingmen in different parts of the kingdom, known as emigration clubs, of which the Rev. Styleman Herring, incumbent of St. Paul's, Clerkenwell, was the chief promoter, assisted large numbers to emigrate. The East London Family Emigration Society, of which the Hon. Mrs. Hobart, the Marchioness of Ripon, and other benevolent ladies were the chief promoters, and to which they have devoted untiring effort, has also sent to Canada over two thousand emigrants. This movement, however, from which so much advantage has accrued in the past, cannot be counted upon to any considerable extent in the future. It was the outgrowth of a temporary depression in trade in the great metropolis, and of the policy of the Government in discharging the dockyard hands at Woolwich and Portsmouth; and the revival of trade, and the failure of the emigrants in almost every case to repay the money advanced to them, as they pledged themselves to do,

their acceptance. We have as the conditions of the first proposition the United Kingdom and many parts of the Continent of Europe teeming with an ever increasing surplus of population, who, in spite of the fluctuations of trade, have at all times, and under all circumstances, a hard battle to fight with the world for bare subsistence. We have an annual emigration from those countries of between three and four hundred thousand people, an emigration entirely apart from any question of state aid or of organized benevolent assistance, the result either of individual savings on the part of the emigrants themselves or of aid from pioneer members of the household who have gone out in advance to pave the way for the family emigration. The overwhelming number of these emigrants seek the United States as their future home, simply because they have heard much of their greatness, of the freedom of their institutions, of their wonderful development, and of the success of those who have already settled in them. They have not heard of Canada, or if they have heard of it, it has been through the prejudiced reports of persons interested in belittling it, who have described it as a northern country with interminable snows in winter and scorching heat in the two or three months of summer. It has been described as a colony of England, without self-government, the mere dependent of the Empire, from which all its laws were drawn. The first great duty, therefore, in the promotion of a successful emigration policy, must be a thorough and complete system for the distribution of information concerning the country. Fairly stated, the claims of Canada, especially upon the emigrant from the United Kingdom, would leave him nothing to envy in the settler in the neighbouring republic. We have institutions as free, selfgovernment as perfect, as the people of the United States. In no country in the world are the principles of popular government and executive responsibility more fully establish

From the man

ed than in this Dominion. agement of the affairs of the school section, through those of the township and county municipalities, to the Provincial Legislatures, and then to the Dominion Parliament, the principle of direct popular control is not simply recognized as a theory, but enjoyed as a great practical fact. The progress of the country during the last twenty years in material wealth and in the great public improvements which are the outward and visible signs of that wealth, has been relatively as great as that of any country in the world. The population of the Dominion has nearly doubled in those twenty years, the aggregate trade has increased about five-fold, the telegraphs which flash their lightning intelligence from one end of the Dominion to the other, and between every city and town and village, and the railways which are permeating every district, are the product of those twenty years. We have the most magnificent system of inland navigation to be found on the face of the globe. We have an educational system which is undenominational without being Godless, and which protects the conscientious scruples of every man in the community. We have the most perfect religious equality, the voluntary principle vindicating its own entire sufficiency for the religious instruction of the masses, and its results testifying to the religious character of the Canadian people. Our towns and cities are prosperous, and new centres of trade and industry are dotting the face of the country. Manufactures are flourishing, giving the diversity of employment which is essential to individual and national prosperity. Improved systems of agriculture are enriching our farmers, and are making the land of the country as productive as that of the most favoured parts of the Continent of America. New districts are being opened up for settlement in all the Provinces, and railway communication is being pressed towards them, so that the farmer emigrant can make his choice from the richly-wooded land of old

Canada and the maritime Provinces, or from the vast prairies of Manitoba and the North

west.

To afford to the emigrant the fullest information as to those advantages which Canada presents to him should be the first duty of the Government in any well considered policy for the promotion of emigration. There are two ways in which this information may be presented: first, by printed matrer in the form of pamphlets and handbooks, and secondly, by means of lectures in the leading centres from which emigrants may be drawn. The action of the Ontario Government in causing to be prepared a pamphlet for distribution in Great Britain has already borne important fruit, the only drawback being that they were not sent in sufficient numbers. The different shipping agents of the United Kingdom are always willing to lend their aid in the distribution of such matter, and they should be kept well supplied with it. Promoting emigration is their business, and they are only too glad to be furnished with the means of exciting an interest in the subject in the districts from which they draw their customers. Of these agents, one firm, the Messrs. Allan, have nearly six hundred in the United Kingdom alone. Some of these—indeed it may with truth be said a very large proportion of them are friendly to this Dominion, and ready to exert themselves earnestly in favour of promoting emigration to it, from considerations of national sympathy. To such a quasi official recognition might with propriety be given, which, by increasing public confidence in them, would promote their interest and increase their ability to encourage emigration. In such an arrangement the question of remuneration is one which cannot be ignored. Canada has suffered much from what is known as the percentage system, that is the payment by the companies to these passenger brokers of a percentage on the tickets they sell. As passages are secured in Britain for the extreme

Western States, the railway and steamship companies co-operating for this purpose, it becomes manifestly the interest of the passenger broker to send the emigrant to the greatest distance, the amount of his percentage being regulated by the sum paid for the ticket. This self-interest is often stronger than any considerations of national sympathy, and many an emigrant is sent to the State of Kansas or Minnesota or Montana, who would have been as easily persuaded to go to Canada but for the fact that the agent received a larger sum for sending him the longer distance. It is hopeless to expect either the steamship or railway companies to forego this system; but the evil may be counteracted by the Canadian Government compensating the agents, whom they may specially select, for the loss in the matter of percentages which will accrue to them by passengers taking tickets to Quebec or some point in Canada instead of to the Western States. A bonus, which would represent the average difference in the percentage upon each ticket sold, would neutralize the temptations of the present system, and would convert these agents into active workers for emigration to the Dominion.

It may fairly be doubted whether the system of Provincial pamphlets or Provincial lecturers are the best methods of imparting information. A pamphlet on Canada itself, embracing all the Provinces, setting forth in a clear and concise style the advantages of each of them, with plain directions to the emigrant, would do more to promote emigration, and would keep the Dominion as a whole, with its varied resources and the special conditions of each of its Provinces, more directly before the public. And as with pamphlets, so with lectures. The Dominion and not the Provinces should appoint the agents on the other side of the water, and these should be charged with the duty of dealing fairly by all the Provinces. We have not yet attained that position as a whole, in the eyes of the world, which would