the interchange of emigrations between Mr. Macgregor is but repeating language Canada and the States pretty nearly balan- familiar to the "native" party when he ces itself. The next great source of foreign says that "the inundation of human beings population is Germany, which, if Dr. Wap- consists, generally, of an accession which pæus is to be believed (Ueber Deutschen diminishes far more than it adds to the Auswanderung und Colonisation) now sends morals of America." That some political her laborious sons to America from the inconvenience attends the exercise of the banks of the Maine and Neckar, to the electoral franchise by so large a body of number of 60,000 annually. Add to these strangers, admitted at once to the freedom the miscellaneous emigrants of other coun- of the great democracy, is beyond dispute. tries; and last year's swarm from the old The Irish form a compact body, acting unhive to North America, colonial and inde- der influences peculiar to themselves, and pendent, cannot be estimated at much less scarcely conceivable by the rest of mankind. than 200,000 persons. In the present year The Germans hang equally together, and of scarcity the number will probably exceed vote doggedly for the democratic "ticket," 300,000. But to this influx must be added with a decided leaning towards repudiation, a still greater sum-that of the migratory and other anarchical principles; and the population of America itself. We must re-new-comers, generally, are apt to take a member how many thousands of her agri- hot and violent part in political movements, cultural families are annually engaged, not of which they have not learned to underas producers, but simply as pioneers: a stand the real bearing. But these are annumber which no statistical returns will en-noyances, not substantial evils. The root able us to count, but of which some idea of the mischief lies in the constitution may be formed, from the circumstance that itself; and were emigration to cease, party three or four thousand square miles are said spirit among native Americans would to be reclaimed from the wilderness every year. And next must be taken into account the vast numbers whom America employs in her public works; the construction of railroads alone absorbing a quantity of labor which may be conjectured from the fact that 1600 miles had already been completed before 1837. All these different classes, like some vast standing army, form a burden on the land, and put in their joint claim to support from its produce, before a single vessel can carry the surplus to the shores of Europe.

There seems to be a growing disposition on the part of some classes of Americans to undervalue the advantages which they derive from the constant accession to their population from Europe, and to fence themselves with a kind of national feeling against the emigrants whom they receive."

produce similar results. As to morals, there is something ludicrous in the notion of our farmers and artisans corrupting the innocent citizens of their adopted country. Nor can we treat much more seriously the supposition that the influx of emigrants is preventing the American people from fusing into an uniform body, actuated by one national spirit. The cohesion of the miscellaneous inhabitants of the States depends on that very looseness of organization, and want of uniform spirit and character, which mission to take charge of, not one, I am happy to say, has been neglected. The most distressing feature in the case is the number of orphan children thrown upon our hands. The story of these helpless little creatures is simple and uniform enough. They left home with their parents; and the fever killed them on the passage-or they have since died in the hospital! We are now trying to find some better place than the alms-house and hospital for these poor little things, where they may be more tenIt is most pleasing, however, to know, that these derly nurtured, and properly educated." This is feelings have in no degree chilled the sympathy or above all praise: and when we add, that most of arrested the active beneficence by which the Ameri- these gentlemen are actually denying themselves the cans have so nobly distinguished themselves in re-recreation of their usual summer retreats, and relation to the recent sufferings of Ireland. In the maining, apart from their families, in the unhealthcity of New York, on the contrary, a government ful heats of the city, rather than hazard the neglect commission has been appointed, for the sole purpose of these duties, we do think that they are entitled to of attending to the condition of the destitute emi-be rewarded, not only by the grateful admiration, grants, who are still landing by thousands on their but by the prompt imitation of all other countries; shores and which, we have reason to know, has and that the concluding exhortation of the letter proceeded in the exercise of its painful and onerous from which we are citing should, from such a quarfunctions with the most exemplary humanity and ter, have the authority of a command-" Do urge, unwearied diligence. We have now before us a whomever it may concern, on your side of the waletter from a leading member of this commission (a ter, to insist upon these poor people being better pronative American), dated in the middle of August, in vided on their passage. They are so crowded, and which he says, "Out of the great number of sick so poorly fed, that they very frequently reach our and destitute which it has been the duty of our com- I shores in an absolutely dying state!"

It

such objectors deprecate. The bond holds | perform an important part in the political fast, only because it is so slight and unop-mechanism of their commonwealth. pressive. It would be difficult to point out Meanwhile, the great movement of Euwhere the American nation, properly so ropean emigration itself offers to the mind's called, is to be found. The descendants of vision a spectacle of the same silent and the Puritans form a people, and a great sustained grandeur with which the eye is one; but they are not the nation. The impressed in watching the everlasting flow English Puritans-the chief of men, whom of some deep and powerful river. it is the paltry fashion of this day to decry brings forcibly home to our imagination, -divided their vast inheritance between that which the continual bustle of superfithem in the reign of Charles I. One body cial politics is apt to make us forget, the remained at home, and established the force of the great under-currents which English constitution; one crossed the At- move society-influences so strong and unilantic, and founded the American republic form as to resemble the instincts of grega-the two greatest achievements of modern rious animals, and yet of which governtimes. According to the historian Mr.ments know little or nothing; which Bancroft, about 22,000 landed in New assemblies cannot control by their rhetoric, England before the assembling of the Long nor more powerful journalists arrest or Parliament, and they received few acces-quicken with their pens. The endless prosions afterwards. The same author com- cession moves ever from East to West, putes that their descendants have now without regard to the counsels, or propheincreased to about four millions, including cies, or speculations of statesmen-an exnearly half the population of New York ceeding great army, in which the masses, and Ohio, but omitting those who are acting without concert or knowledge of each scattered over the other parts of the Re- other, accomplish their purpose as effectupublic, and may be said to have amalga-ally as if one will actuated the wholemated with the remainder of its population. "Ein lang' und breites Volksgewicht, There is something also of the character of Der erste wusste vom letzten nicht." a distinct race, very different from the for- The last ten years have witnessed the mer, in the white inhabitants of the South-putting in practice of very ingenious theoern Atlantic States. Another exists in the ries of colonization. We have, by dint of valleys of the Alleghanies, where the Ger- great efforts and extensive agitation, man blood prevails. All these, and many achieved the result of sending out as many more loose and floating masses, if such they as 30,000 emigrants by government aid may be called, of population, are held to- in one year (1841); and it was thought, gether by the slightest possible political with great reason, a wonderful exertion, union. If the inhabitants of each canton with which it has been found impossible to or district grew up into a fixed compact keep up since. Meanwhile, the unassisted, body-if they were not cemented together, unnoticed emigration of every year trebles as it were, by immigration from without and or quadruples that amount-so little can intermigration among themselves-sectional the laborious efforts of government keep interests would, in all probability, soon pace with the gigantic operations of masses prevail, and the Union would fall in pieces. of men acting on private motives. ColoGrievances would accumulate, and Repeal-nial affairs have excited for some time past ers would arise wherever the province was an unusual degree of interest and stir on forced to give way to the community, were the surface of society. Much has been not the population itself, in most parts of done towards rendering our settlements the country, renewed too rapidly to admit attractive to emigrants. Not only governof local sentiments growing to a head. ment, but powerful combinations of capiAnd the succession of emigrants from Eu-talists have been unsparing in their inducerope, while it keeps up that circulation ments and promises. Repeatedly has it which seems essential to the life of the been shown by economical argument, that American coustitution, at the same time the United States, on the other hand, conhas some effect in keeping up a common demned the emigrant to poverty by selling feeling of kindred amidst these fluctuating their land too cheap. Yet, if we look at multitudes. It appears, therefore, that the the tables of emigration, we find that these European strangers, besides fighting the battles of the Americans, manning their ships, and constructing their public works,

noisy blasts and counterblasts had absolutely no effect whatever upon it. They neither affected its numbers nor its direc

87

tion. Indeed, emigration to the United | brave man only that every soil is a native
States has increased greatly in the last ten country.
Nor has it entered into the calculations
years, while that to our American colonies
has, on the whole, fallen off, and was much of ordinary thinkers how essentially the pe-
greater in 1831, before Mr. Wakefield was culiarities of American government and so-
heard of, or systematic colonization began ciety are calculated to further this great
to be preached, than it has ever been since. design of Providence, by rendering the
As the progress, so the quality of emigra- bounties of nature as open and as attractive
tion, so to speak, has been always so steady as possible to the host of new-comers. We
as to show the permanent nature of the have had condemnation enough expended
causes which produce it. Notwithstanding of late on American institutions; let us now
the supposed attachment of Englishmen to look a little at the favorable side, not in
their own habits and political institutions, respect of those democratic theories which
these ties seem as inefficacious to keep them for the moment have gone to sleep in this
on this side of the republican border, as the country, but as to actual every-day prac-
doctrines of political economy. For many tice. The States might by this time have
years past, English emigrants to the New acquired a church and aristocracy of their
World have gone almost wholly to the own-or have fallen under a military mo-
States of Irish, a considerable majority to narchy--or have remained under English
Canada; while the Highland Scots retain colonial dominion, And let it even be as-
an odd predilection for the fogs and rocks sumed that they would have enjoyed more
of the lower colonies, so resembling their of respectability and decency.under either
own. Connexion, no doubt, is one main form of government-would they have been
cause which perpetuates these hereditary as attractive to the emigrant? If so, why
tendencies of the great families of our fel- is it that, notwithstanding all the obvious
low subjects: neighbor lends neighbor a advantages of our colonies, almost the
helping hand to lift him across the Atlan- whole of the unassisted English and Low-
tic: families are transported piece by piece, land Scotch emigration across the Atlantic
like ready-made houses; the stone cries out-that is, the emigration of the better pro-
of the wall, and the beam from the timber vided and more thoughtful class-goes to
answers it: and the correspondence be- the States instead of Canada? Again, the
tween districts at home and abroad, once Southern provinces of Russia offer, to the
formed, is continued through many genera- German emigrant, equally vast tracts of
tions. But there is more than this in the unpeopled and fertile land, more manage-
economy of the great movement--much, as able for purposes of settlement, on account
we have said, of which governments and of the absence of forests, equally healthy,
political reasoners know nothing. What and nearer at hand; and every possible in-
do these multitudes care for theories of ducement is held out by the Russian go-
civil government? American politics have vernment to German colonists; they are
been as unpopular in this country for some fostered and cared for, by nobles and au-
years past as they were formerly popular: thorities, like exotic plants purchased at
but emigration, as we have seen, has in- great cost. And yet, after sixty or seventy
creased steadily all the while. What, indeed, years of experiments, the German colonists
are Church and State, and ancestral insti-in Russia, and their descendants, are said
tutions to them, more than the baronial by Mr. Kobl not to exceed a quarter of a
honors of the nobleman to the deer who million, and appear to receive very few re-
break out of his overstocked park? what cruits. The hardy Swabians and Franco-
are slavery and repudiation, and all the
black spots which European observation
traces on the disk of that Western sun which
lures them across the ocean? They seek
the land of promise; and in nine cases out
of ten, they find it a land of performance.
America is at this day, more than ever,
what it has been for centuries, a great pro-
vidential blessing to an overpeopled Old
World; the greater, because not indiscrimi-
nate because it offers nothing except to
the industrious and energetic-it is to the

nians prefer to cross the ocean and take their chance in America, where they are just as much strangers as in Russia; with this difference, that their adopted countrymen care not one straw for their success or discomfiture, and they are left to sink or swim. For every German subject whom the Czar acquires, Pennsylvania and Ohio gain nine or ten citizens.

It is idle to suppose that this marked preference on the part of the more substantial classes of emigrants, arises from exalt

ed political theories, or exaggerated expec- | forward to the achievement of independence tations of wealth. Were such the case, the and contentment before he die. bubble would have burst long ago. People The direction of the great current of emigo to America, because, in the long run, gration, both of new comers from Europe, those who went before them have found it and wanderers from the Eastern States, apanswer. Nor is its superior fertility of soil, pears to undergo gradual changes, like everyor advantages of its climate, which have pro- thing else in that land of mutability. The duced these results. They are owing, in desertion of the Eastern sea-board, wherever the first place, to political institutions. the population has not acquired some deEmigrants require neither patronage nor gree of cohesion by the growth of trade encouragement to flourish. They are not and towns, is said to go on as rapidly as needed by the industrious man, if tolerably ever; and although attempts have been fortunate in his position: they can do no- made of late to re-people some abandoned thing for him when located on ungrateful lands, more years than the period of their soil and to the idle man they are simply brief cultivation must probably elapse, beinjurious everywhere. Justice and freedom fore they recover their fertility, and become alone are necessary. Not the nicely-ba- once more attractive to emigrants. The lanced and well-considered justice, admi- great valley of the Ohio, to the north of nistered by careful lawyers under venerable that river whose left bank is blighted by codes, which men enjoy in countries of slavery, is still the main recipient of emiolder civilization; but rough, practical jus-gration, as it has been for about thirty tice, administered by men who may not be years. But already there are symptoms of always sagacious, or always incorruptible, a change of direction: it seems that of late but who understand his case, and are guid-years the current has set more decidedly ed by usages which have grown up along towards the southern shore of the Canadiwith the outward circumstances to which an lakes; a region less magnificent in its they are applied. Not freedom, as under- vegetation, but further removed from slavestood by a political theorist, or a philoso- ry, possessing a healthier climate, and enphical poet, or a wandering Arab: but simply the license to do as nearly as possible what a man pleases, provided he do not interfere with the rights of neighbors in similar circumstances with himself, or oppose those passions of the multitude with which his own generally coincide. Of all this he is certain from the moment he touches American soil. What has continental Europe to compare with this? What has even England, with all the ancient liberality of her institutions, cramped, as she inevitably is, by the necessity of maintaining Within these limits, assuredly magnifiexisting orders of society in a struggling cent enough, the principal future expansion and restless position, and by the complex of the white population of America is prorights of property, which as necessarily bably to take place: for the "Far West, arise in a space so densely crowded? Let us not deceive ourselves. The ultra-democratic career of America may be a warning to our statesmen. Her social and political deformities may be, and we rejoice that they are, fully appreciated by the educated In 1842, "of the articles of flour, pork, bacon, classes of our community, and justly ani- lard, beef, whisky, corn, and wheat, New Orleans madverted on by the ordinary guides of po- exported to the value of 4,446,989 dollars; Clevepular feeling. But, notwithstanding all land, 4,431,799." "If we suppose," adds Mr. Scott, this, America is still to the bulk of our po- the upper lakes sent eastward as much as Cleve"what cannot but be true, that all the other ports of pulation the land of requital and redress-land, we have the startling fact, that this lake counthe distant country in which oppressions cease, and poverty grows full-fed and bold, in which fortune opens her arms to the courageous, and the least adventurous looks

joying means of transit and commerce, to the production of which nature has contributed a larger share. Cleveland, or Maumee, or Sandusky, or some other spot on the banks of Lake Erie, say the speculators, will be the great growing American city of the latter end of this century. Next in order comes a similar, but less favorably situated region, the States of the far NorthWest, Iowa and Wisconsin, already receiving a considerable proportion of the annual immigration.

however attractive to the imagination of Americans, is not the destined seat of a community resembling that which they have at present constructed. Nature, so lavish in her bounties to them, has nevertheless

try, but yesterday brought under our notice, already sends abroad more than twice the amount of human food that is shipped from the great exporting city of New Orleans, the once vaunted sole outlet of the Mississippi valley."

the face of the continent appears to ex-
hibit a labyrinth of sierras and sandy or
snowy deserts; including vast basins with-
out an outlet for their waters; a configura-
tion like that of the surface of the moon
seen through a telescope. Captain Fre-
mont's narrative of his desperate winter-
march from the Columbia to the Bay of
San Francisco, reads like that of a night-
mare journey in a dream. But a very great
part of this region is still unexplored.
There are few things in recent travel more
spirit-stirring than the same traveller's ac-
count of his arrival on the banks of the
Great Salt Lake of the Eutawas, the Cas-
pian of America, the subject of endless su-
perstitious fables, both Spanish and Eng-
lish, but on which boat had never been
launched before ;-" He was the first that
-“
ever burst into that silent sea.

set them her own definite limits, which they will not profitably overstep. From a line drawn parallel with, and one or two hundred miles west of, the Mississippi, the prairie region extends uninterruptedly to the Rocky Mountains; and this region, though embracing many fertile tracts, is not in general adapted for the settlement of a great agricultural people. As the dense population of China is hemmed in to the north and west by the almost unpeopled territory of the Tartar nomades, or as that of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt was closely girt by the Desert, so that a mere line separated the land cultivated like a garden from the solitude of the Arab; so likewise, though with somewhat less marked contrast, the populous Mississippi valley will border westward on the land of pasturage. It is true that nature has been bountiful to the Anglo-Americans, even in the But there is little reason to suppose that character of their deserts. These are only these mysterious recesses conceal anything reached gradually. Nature dies by slow more attractive than what is already known successive changes, as the traveller passes and visited by explorers. It is true that from the banks of the great river to the the shores of the Pacific, from the ColumRocky Mountains. First comes the tract bia to the San Francisco, contain here and of scattered wood; then the uniform and there magnificent tracts; regions which level prairie; then the sandy waste; and invite the wanderer from the East, over even this is interspersed with remarkable thousands of leagues, to bask under a softspots of fertility, the "parks" and "pens" er climate, amidst a grander vegetation than of the Western trappers and hunters. But, even his own mother country can furnish. speaking generally, the character of ex- Nevertheless, we still retain the doubts treme aridity prevails throughout the cen- expressed in a former Number, upon the tral belt of North America, from the re- settlement of the Oregon question, whether gion of snow to that of eternal sunshine. emigration en masse will be directed to New Mexico, for example-just now the ob- that quarter from the eastward for a very ject of the fierce rapacity of a people possess- long period to come, even should the ing more fertile unoccupied land than any Americans acquire California, as by this other upon earth--is but a narrow valley, time they possibly have done. We read in which rain rarely falls, kept in a produc- much of the colonization of Oregon in tive state only by the greatest economy of their newspapers: nevertheless, it seems water, under the Spanish system of irriga- that most of the few settlers as yet estabtion. Its great Rio del Norte, which looks lished in that quarter, are not regular farso imposing on the maps, is said to be sel- mers, but hunters and trappers, who have dom above knee-deep, in a course of fifteen tired for a while of their wandering life, hundred miles to the tide water. After the and taken up the axe and the spade with Rocky Mountains have been passed, the the usual readiness of their countrymen; country to the westward, making due al- but who are pretty sure to quit them again, lowance for fertile intervals, appearing far so soon as the fit of civilization passes off. more luxuriant to the eyes of tired travel- The caravans of emigrants which have lers than sober reality warrants, seems to reached it, have in many instances gone preserve the general aspect of barrenness. through extremities of privation and sufThe great Columbia rolls a volume of sand fering. Miseries, such as Indian tribes and gravel through shattered mountains of flying from starvation out of their disvolcanic rock; its waters are said to" have peopled hunting-grounds, or African clans no fertilizing qualities, but to deteriorate from the razzias of civilized conquerors, and exhaust the land which they overflow." have rarely endured, are voluntarily borne South of this river, and far beyond what

*Captain Fremont, quoted by Mr. M'Gregor,

is, or was recently, the Mexican frontier, vol. i., 577 and 624.