Selkirk and Talbot had few contemporary imitators, for between 1806 and 1815 Napoleon was harassing Europe, and men found employment in connection with military and transport operations, not needing for the time, the possibilities which a colonial life offered them.

The period of 1783-1815 is important, in that it paved the way for the movement which was to assume such notable proportions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Without the inrush of Loyalist settlers to Canada in the closing years of the eighteenth century, the map of British North America, to-day, would probably present a very different aspect. It was these sturdy men and women who broke down the barriers of forests and wildernesses which seemed impenetrable, and opened the course for later settlement. In comparison with the volume of the present outflow, the emigrants of this early period were, of course, insignificant in numbers, but they were pioneers and made history and must be valued accordingly. Their actual labors, commercial and agricultural, were of no great moment, for they had many difficulties with which to contend. In Lower Canada, financial conditions were oppressive: land tenure, everywhere, bred discontent, whilst discord with the rebel neighbors of the south proved a constant source of danger.

Major-General T. Bland Strange, in the United Service Magazine, May, 1903, pp. 151-152, writes:

to be to select a proper situation for his house. This should be placed, as near as may be, to the public road on which his lot abuts, and contiguous, if possible, to a spring or run of water. Having chosen his spot, he then sets about clearing a sufficient space to erect his house on, taking care to cut down all the large trees within the distance of at least 100 feet. The dimensions of the house are generally 20 feet by 18 feet, and the timber used in constructing the walls, consisting of the rough stems of trees cut into those lengths, is not to exceed 2 feet in diameter; the height of the roof is commonly about 13 feet, which affords a ground-room and one overhead; the house is roofed in with shingles (a sort of wooden tiles) split out of the oak, chestnut, or pine timber; a door, windows, and an aperture for the chimney at one end, are next cut out of the walls, the spaces between the logs being filled up with split wood, and afterwards plastered both inside and out with clay and mortar, which renders it perfectly warm. When once the necessary space for the house is cleared and the logs for the walls collected on the spot, the expense and labor of the settler in erecting his habitation is a mere trifle; it being an established custom among the neighboring settlers to give their assistance in the raising of it; and the whole is performed in a few hours. The settler having now a house over his head commences clearing a sufficient quantity of land to raise the annual supply of provisions required for his family."

The British effort at military colonization, after the conquest by Wolfe, proved futile. The Fraser Highlanders were disbanded and settled at Murray Bay, on the St. Lawrence, but as no Scotch lassies were provided, they married the lively little French girls, whose creed, language, and nationality they adopted; the only traces of their Highland descent are their names and red hair. At the close of the Peninsular War, individual naval and military officers settled in what was called Upper Canada, but no systematic effort was made to encourage the settlement of the rank and file quite the contrary, from that day to this, everything has been done to discourage it. Under the administration of Mr. Cardwell, the garrisons were withdrawn from all the Colonies suitable for settlement by white soldiers. The old Royal Canadian Rifles, composed of Volunteers from various British regiments, were struck off the Army list, as also the old Cape Mounted Rifles, and the emigration of officers was checked by a Royal warrant subjecting them to loss of pension, should they elect to serve under any Colonial Government. At the close of the Crimean War, the only soldiers assisted to emigrate, and given grants of land, were the German Legion whom we settled in South Africa, though they never fired a shot for us; some of their descendants probably fought against us in the late war. Our own British-born soldiers of the Crimean War and Indian Mutiny were, in many cases, left to die in the workhouse, as the shorter periods of service then introduced deprived them of the right of pension. At the close of these wars, the reductions in our arsenals and dockyards drove large numbers of mechanics, some of whom were ex-soldiers and sailors, with their families, to the United States, whose industries, especially of war material, largely benefited thereby. According to Lord Charles Beresford something similar is now going on in his constituency at Woolwich.

The earlier settlement by the Pilgrim Fathers was on independent lines, assisted in the Southern States, as later in Australia, by the transportation of convicts, sometimes for slight offences, who in many instances became good citizens.

HISTORICAL SURVEY (1815-1912)

Though emigration from the United Kingdom to North America had begun on a limited scale in the early part of the seventeenth century1 and had grown in volume during the

1 Colonization Circular, 1877, P. 7.

eighteenth, no official returns relating to the extent of the exodus were made until 1815. In this year, the great war, in which England had for so long been engaged, terminated, and men turned to emigration as though it were the one panacea for all social ills.1 In 1815, the outflow to North America stood at 1889 persons; it then grew annually with slight fluctuations until 1852, when the enormous total of 277,134 was reached, an exodus which is, considering the volume of people from which it was drawn,2 probably without parallel in the history of any civilized country. The years 1846 to 1854, inclusive, were remarkable for their high rate of departures, but, after 1854, a sudden and, with some fluctuations, a continued shrinkage took place until in 1861 the numbers dropped to 62,471, the smallest emigration since 1844. The Crimean War, 1854-1856, and the Indian Mutiny, 1857-1859, which caused an increased demand for young men in the army and navy, were largely responsible for the falling off in the returns of this period. Between 1861 and 1869 the exodus took an upward tendency, and, in this latter year, acute distress at home made the figures rise to 236,892, and they remained somewhat high until 1873. The middle seventies proved a period of diminished emigration, but the ebb was soon followed by a copious flow, for, in the year 1882, the important total of 349,014 was reached. Recent times have shown somewhat high figures; in fact, for every year since 1903, with the exception of 1908, an exodus to North America of over three hundred thousand has been returned. In 1910, the outward stream numbered 499,669, and, in 1911, 464,330 souls.

The above figures require some qualification. The early records. refer almost entirely to men and women of British nationality; the later ones speak of the volume of traffic as carried by the Atlantic transport concerns and so contain an important foreign element. It is thus misleading to make comparisons without duly allowing for this change in the composition of the exodus. A second point to note is that, at the present time, the outward passengers are largely counterbalanced by the inward passengers, but, prior to the sixties, the inward passengers were few compared

1 Cf. J. D. Rogers, "Historical Geography of Canada ” (Lucas), p. 67. Census of 1851. England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland; population given as 27,309,346

with the outward. Thus, net emigration to-day is found by subtracting the incoming from the outgoing stream, but net emigration until about the year 1860 was the total outflow with few or no deductions whatever. A third point to note is that the total population of the three kingdoms has grown considerably since the year 1815; it is thus misleading to compare, say, the 277,134 emigrants of the year 1852 with the 499,669 emigrants of 1910 without taking into consideration the gross populations of these two years. Certain statistics which deal with this matter, state that the proportion of emigration to the population was 0.84 per cent between 1853 and 1855, but only 0.39 per cent in the period 1906-1910. Thus the exodus from the Mother Country was, in reality, more remarkable in the earlier than in the later period.

Of the 983,227 emigrants who left the United Kingdom for all destinations, prior to 1840, 499,899, or more than half, went to British North America; of the remainder, 417,765 went to the United States, and 58,449 to the Australian Colonies, including New Zealand. Since 1834, however, the total annual migration to the United States has always exceeded that proceeding to Canada, but it must be mentioned that when British emigrants as distinct from all emigrants from Britain are considered, it will be found that, on two occasions since 1880, Canada has welcomed more men and women than the United States. This happened in the last two years of the period, 1910 and 1911.

The history of emigration in the nineteenth and twentieth century may be traced from the Government reports and papers which have, from time to time, been published. The first of these documents, which was devoted solely to a consideration of the present subject, was the report of the Select Committee which sat in 1826 to consider emigration from the United Kingdom. From this report we learn that the Government first gave its serious attention to the matter in 1820. In that and the following years many debates were held in both Houses of Parliament to discuss its value as a remedy for the social distress which then existed in the home country.1 As a result of these debates, the select committees of 1826 and 1827 were appointed.

1 Cf. Hansard, "Parliamentary Debates," Vol. XII, p. 1358; Vol. XIV, p. 1360; Vol. XVI, pp. 142, 227, 475, 653.

The Committee of 1826 reported generally on the evidence placed before it, and stated that there was a greater amount of laboring population in the United Kingdom than could be profitably employed, and that the British Colonies afforded a field where the excess could be disposed of with advantage. The Committee of 1827 entered further into detail and pointed out more specifically the nature and extent of the assistance which it would recommend to be given to emigration from national resources. The Bishop of Limerick, who appeared before the earlier body, said:

The evil is pressing and immediate. It calls, therefore, for an immediate remedy. Take any system of home relief, it must be gradual in its operation: before it can be brought to bear, the present sufferers will have died off, and others will have supplied their place, but not without a dreadful course of intermediate horrors. Now, Emigration is an instantaneous relief, it is what bleeding would be to an apoplectic patient. The sufferers are at once taken away: and, be it observed, from a country where they are a nuisance and a pest, to a country where they will be a benefit and a blessing. Meantime, so far as displaced tenants are taken away, the landlords, aided by existing laws, and especially by the Act now about to be passed (Sir Henry Parnell's Act), will have it in their power to check the growth of population, somewhat in the same way as, after removing redundant blood, a skillful physician will try to prevent the human frame from generating more than what is requisite for a healthful state.1

The committee called a considerable number of witnesses and repeatedly put the following question to those giving evidence:

Were the Government to advance an indigent man his passage money and provide him with a homestead, could he be expected to repay the loan at the rate of £5 per annum, commencing after his fifth year of residence?

Most witnesses replied in the affirmative, with the result that the committees suggested that the Treasury should advance a sum of about ten thousand pounds, with which it was proposed to form a loan fund for emigrants. The essence of this report is contained in the following extract:

Your Committee cannot but express their opinion that a more effectual remedy than any temporary palliative is to be found in the

1 Page 142 of first Report.