| | | | | | | Quarter | | Destination. | 1846. | 1847. | 1848. | 1849. | 1850. | ending Sept | | | | | | | | 30, 1851. | | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------------+ | | | | | | | | | United States | 45.1 | 31.8 | 57.3 | 73.3 | 79.4 | 80.5 | | British America | 33.4 | 42.5 | 12.5 | 13.9 | 11.7 | 10.8 | | All other places | 21.5 | 25.7 | 30.2 | 12.8 | 8.9 | 8.7 | | +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------------+ | Total | 100. | 100. | 100. | 100. | 100. | 100. | The accompanying abstract, from the returns of the Emigration Commissioners, exhibits two most remarkable results:--1st, The proportion of emigration to British America and other destinations is gradually falling off; 2d, That to the United States is steadily and rapidly increasing, so that they now receive four out of every five emigrants who leave our shores. Is this distribution to be regarded as a matter of indifference in a political point of view? Are we to understand that it is no concern to us who remain behind, whether the labour and capital of those who leave us shall go to fill up the vacuum of our own colonial empire, or to carry new accessions of wealth and power to those in whose prosperity (to put the matter mildly) we have only a secondary interest? This question the consistent Free-Trader is bound to answer unhesitatingly in the affirmative. In his cosmopolitan philosophy, the interests of one country are no more to be considered than those of any other. The theory of absolute freedom of exchange expunges altogether the idea of nationalism, and regards man, not as a member of this or that community, but as the denizen of a great universal republic. Local and historical associations--ties of kindred and of birth--are only so many obstructions in the way of human progress; and an Englishman is nothing more than the subject of certain animal wants and instincts, the gratification of which he must be left to seek wherever he finds the materials most abundant. Such is Free Trade in its true scope and ultimate tendency. What shall be said, then, of the consistency or sincerity of those pseudo-apostles of the doctrine, who, having been the most active in promoting that nibbling and piecemeal legislation which they choose to call freedom of trade--who have been loudest in proclaiming a universal commercial fraternity, and in denouncing colonies as a wasteful encumbrance--are now the first to take alarm at the natural and inevitable result of their own measures, and to call out for a better regulation of emigration; in other words, for legislative interference with the free action of those of our countrymen who, being thrust out of employment in the land of their birth, are so