K — Emigration
Emigration was not made the subject, during this period, of statute, order, or circular. At first we find the Central Authority continuing the favour to it which had been expressed in the 1834 Report and in the documents and action of the Poor Law Commissioners. In 1849 the Central Authority got a Bill through Parliament increasing the powers of promoting and assisting emigration,462 in support of which the Manchester Board of Guardians petitioned in characteristic phraseology.463 In the same year the Central Authority even approved the sending out of a convict’s family to join him; “the transportation of the convict is not a voluntary desertion of the family, and when the Government promotes the sending out of the family... the expenditure of the poor rate in furtherance of that object may properly be sanctioned.”464 By 1852 the number of persons emigrated at the expense of the poor rate had risen to 3271 in a single year, four-fifths going to the Australian Colonies.465 By this time the total number of persons assisted to emigrate at the expense of the poor rates, between 1834 and 1853, had mounted up to nearly 24,000.466 The policy then changes. The number of persons emigrated at the expense of the poor rate suddenly declines, falling from 3271 in 1852 to 488 in 1853.467 In 1854 it is recorded that the Central Authority had “declined during the past year to sanction any expenditure from the poor rate in aid of emigration to the Australian Colonies (except in... special circumstances), on the ground that the condition of those colonies [appeared] to be such as of itself to attract largely voluntary and independent emigration”468—a reason, we may observe, which does not seem relevant to a discussion of the advantage or disadvantage of emigration as a means of reducing pauperism at home. It does not appear that the change of policy was due, as it might have been, to a conviction that a colony in a period of excitement over “gold rushes” was not a suitable place to which to send a young person in whose welfare one took a personal interest. It may be that the real reason was a political one, viz. objections expressed by the Australian colonies themselves. Whatever the motive, however, rate-aided emigration remained in disfavour. “We must consider,” said the Poor Law Board in 1860, “that at present emigration cannot be considered as any practical remedial measure for the repression of pauperism.”469 In 1863, Mr. Villiers, speaking as President of the Poor Law Board, gave a new reason for the disfavour into which emigration had fallen. “I do not mean to say,” he protested, on a discussion about the distress caused by the Lancashire Cotton Famine, “that the Government should discourage emigration.... [But] when we know the large amount of capital in the country, and the great increase of it, and are also cognisant of the demand for labour a few years since, I do not think it would be wise of the Government to expend public money in the promotion of emigration.”470 For the next seven years emigration at the expense of the poor rate practically ceases, the number of persons so assisted falling in 1866-7 to eighteen.471 In the following year, 277 persons were sent from Poplar, then exceptionally distressed,472 but there was no general resumption of the policy, so far as adults were concerned. In 1869 the Central Authority, whilst disavowing any intention of reviving the policy, tried to simplify the procedure with regard to emigration, but found the representatives of the colonies adverse.473 In 1870 there was, however, a slight revival, accompanied by the new feature of the emigration to Canada of orphan or deserted children (Miss Rye’s scheme),474 destined to become thenceforth a constant feature, though not in any one year attaining any considerable magnitude. The total number of persons emigrated at the expense of the poor rate in the seventeen years between 1853 and 1870 was between three and four thousand, as contrasted with nearly 24,000 in the preceding nineteen years.475