EMIGRATION may be defined to be a man's leaving his native country with all his property to settle permanently in another. Emigration is therefore neces sarily implied in the word Colonization, and it is by the terms of our definition easily distinguished from a man's tempo rary absence from his native country, and from the kind of absence specially called Absenteeism.
Though a man may be properly called an emigrant who leaves Great Britain or Ireland, for instance, and settles in France or Germany, or elsewhere in Europe, the term has in modern times come to have a more restricted and particular sense. By the term emigrant we generally under stand one who leaves an old and thickly peopled country to settle in a country where there is abundance of land that has never been cultivated before, and where the native population is thinly scattered, and the foreign settlers are yet either few compared with the surface or none at all. The countries to which emigration is mainly directed at present are the British possessions in North America, the United States of North America, and the great island of Australia, with Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand.
An emigrant to any of these remote countries must be either a capitalist or a labourer, or he may combine in himself both conditions; but even a mere la bourer cannot emigrate without some ca pital, though the amount may be only enough to convey him to the spot where his labour and skill will be in demand. It was long a prevalent notion among na tions, or perhaps we may rather say with those possessed of power at the head of nations (who have generally been slower in learning any great practical truth than the mass of the people, whose understand ing is sharpened by a nearer view of their own interest), that emigration should be discouraged or prevented, as tending to weaken a nation. The objection, we be lieve, was generally founded rather on a notion that the nation lost by its dimi nished population, than that it suffered from the abstraction of capital. As to the matter of population, however, some observers even then could not fail to re mark, that emigration did not seem to diminish the population, but that on the contrary it seemed to be soon followed by an increase. This was observed with
respect to Portugal at the time when she was extending her conquests and colonies, and is a fact confirmed by more recent experience, the explanation of which presents no difficulty. The abstraction of capital, skill, and industry might seem, and indeed is primarily, so much good taken from the mother country ; but in asmuch as the emigrants retain in their new settlements, through the medium of commercial exchange which is daily be coming more rapid and easy, a connexion with the parent state, it may be and often is the fact, that they ultimately contribute more to the wealth of the mother country when in the new settlements than they could have done at home. Many of those, for example, who settle in the western states of America or in Canada with no capital beyond their hands, by their in dustry become the possessors of a well cultivated piece of land, and ultimately consume more of the products of British industry, for which they must give some thing in exchange, than if they had re mained in their native country : and as, in order that emigration to new countries may be a successful undertaking to those who emigrate, and ultimately advantage ous to the mother country, there must be an emigration both of capitalists and la bourers, it would seem to follow that a state, if it consult the happiness of its citizens, should place no impediments to the emigration either of capitalists of all kinds or of labourers or artisans of any kind, but should on the contrary give rea sonable facilities.
If a state then should be wise enough not to discourage emigration, it may be asked, should it aid and direct it? So far as a state should aid and direct emigra Lion, there must be two distinct objects kept in view by the state ; one must be to benefit the parent country, the other to benefit those who emigrate. On the contrary, as to the individual who emi grates, whether he emigrates under the protection and direction of the govern ment or not, his sole object is of course to hatter his own condition.