Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
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Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches — Volume 2
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron
English essays
"Dr Seybert says, that the passengers to ten of the principal ports of
the United States, in the year 1817, amounted to 22,235; of whom 11,977
were from Great Britain and Ireland; 4164 from Germany and Holland; 1245
from France; 58 from Italy, 2901 from the British possessions in North
America; 1569 from the West Indies; and from all other countries, 321.
These, however, we may conclude, with the editor of Styles's Register,
were far short of the number that arrived."
We have not the honour of knowing either Dr Seybert or the editor of
Styles's Register. We cannot, therefore, decide on their respective
claims to our confidence so peremptorily as Mr Sadler thinks fit to do.
Nor can we agree to what Mr Sadler very gravely assigns as a reason for
disbelieving Dr Seyberts's testimony. "Such accounts," he says, "if not
wilfully exaggerated, must always fall short of the truth." It would be
a curious question of casuistry to determine what a man ought to do in a
case in which he cannot tell the truth except by being guilty of
wilful exaggeration. We will, however, suppose, with Mr Sadler, that Dr
Seybert, finding himself compelled to choose between two sins, preferred
telling a falsehood to exaggerating; and that he has consequently
underrated the number of emigrants. We will take it at double of the
Doctor's estimate, and suppose that, in 1817, 45,000 Europeans crossed
to the United States. Now, it must be remembered that the year 1817 was
a year of the severest and most general distress all over Europe,--a
year of scarcity everywhere, and of cruel famine in some places. There
can, therefore, be no doubt that the emigration of 1817 was very far
above the average, probably more than three times that of an ordinary
year. Till the year 1815, the war rendered it almost impossible to
emigrate to the United States either from England or from the Continent.
If we suppose the average emigration of the remaining years to have been
16,000, we shall probably not be much mistaken. In 1818 and 1819,
the number was certainly much beyond that average; in 1815 and 1816,
probably much below it. But, even if we were to suppose that, in every
year from the peace to 1820, the number of emigrants had been as high as
we have supposed it to be in 1817, the increase by procreation among the
white inhabitants of the United States would still appear to be about 30
per cent. in ten years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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