which various classes of immigrants must necessarily exercise on their earlier inhabitants, and have even in some degree proposed to deal in a practical manner with the problem. It may not, therefore, be out of place to consider some of the questions thus brought into notice, the more so as Ireland is surely as deeply interested in the policy pursued towards immigrants by foreign nations as any other country.
The first point which is evident on even the most cursory notice is the general extent of the movement. Almost every country in Europe is a region either of emigration or immigration. England, Germany, Italy, and the Scandinavian peninsula, each send out an annual stream, varying, it is true, in amount with the conditions of trade, but never wholly ceasing. France, on the contrary, receives an increasing number of foreigners, and in this way has the decline, or at all events the very slow growth, of its native population somewhat disguised. Switzerland, again, is at once a land of emigration and immigration, the amounts of each being very nearly the same. New countries are all, more or less, the recipients of the surplus population of older lands, and find that their unoccupied territory is being rapidly taken up by the new arrivals, and that their city populations are in many cases mainly composed of persons born abroad. There is, too, a process which may be called transmigration operating on an extensive scale. Large numbers pass from Canada to the United States, or from one Australasian colony to another; and within these larger areas there is a great tendency towards shiftings of population—in the United States, from the eastern towards the western States, and in Australia, towards the larger colonies. The entry of oriental countries into the field is a further evidence of the diffusion of the spirit of movement, though its chief importance lies rather in its indications of what may happen in the future, rather than the actual magnitude of the emigration.
To enable a somewhat less inadequate idea to be formed of the series of facts thus briefly indicated, the accompanying tables may prove of service.
These changes in distribution of population do not thus end. They produce economic, social, and political effects of several kinds which need some fuller notice.
Both emigration and immigration, economically considered, have a very definite object. They aim at producing a better distribution of labour, just as interchange of commodities tends to bring about a better circulation of wealth. The emigrant generally seeks to improve his condition; he is attracted by the prospect of higher wages and a better standard of living. Older countries by the process get rid of their spare population, and are saved from the fall of wages which almost inevitably results when the labour market is unrelieved. New lands by the same agency receive that additional labour force which is essential for a full development of their resources. It is true that under the influence of mercantilist ideas it was once universally held that emigration exhausted a population; but it need hardly be said that theory and experience alike show that where social conditions are even moderately well adjusted, the number of inhabitants
