favourably affect. Financial corporations, bankers, railway shareholders, here and in Canada, steamship owners, all these, besides the labouring classes, are directly and immediately interested. Brokers, merchants, manufacturers of many British staples are, not so immediately but, indirectly and vitally concerned in promoting it. Heads of large families, with sons before whom at present no future lies, have every conceivable reason for favouring it. Clergymen and philanthropists, who are acquainted with the dangers, miseries, and evil associations that beset the poor and the young in our populous towns, even in our villages where the beershop (excluded from the Canadian North-West) is daily and nightly open; apostles of the temperance, total abstinence, and local option crusades; all these zealous gentlemen and ladies ought to comprehend that the stone of Sisyphus will roll into the sea if the goal of Canada with local option everywhere, except in the North-West, and total prohibition there, can be reached; and a radical cure for intolerable social maladies be applied.
In view of the possible prize of an emigration "pass," and peasant proprietorship in the New World, a condition for which is a good character (see par. 4. of Scheme), what a general amelioration of manners and morals, what a spreading habit of steady work will be developed among those who will never win it. The people would be taught by their instructors in town and country to aim at that prize. Employers of labour would soon find such a change come over the behaviour of the "hand" as to more than compensate for any possible scarcity occasioned by this movement. But a rise in wages is the chief bugbear. It is a visionary fear. The foundation of the proposal is the notorious existence of surplus labour, that is of persons who cannot get full work or any work. Remove them, and those who are left, instead of working four days, will find occupation six days in the week. While each man earns more, the pay-sheet total will remain the same.
Experience contradicts the hypothesis that labour must be intrinsically cheap because it is superabundant. Does not Mr. Bright, amid the present glut, boast that the working man today is better paid and works shorter time than his father? Wages are higher here than elsewhere, partly because, owing to over-population, rents, meat, and vegetables have doubled in price. Until the workman can live cheaply our natural manufacturing advantages are neutralized; thus a vast emigration
