decrease in the value of the products; and the diminished sustaining power of the land, together with the comparatively large birth-rate, has brought about a decided over-population.' The amount of the resulting outflow cannot be stated with perfect certainty. Some of the temporary become, as has been said, permanent emigrants, and were perhaps so in intention from the first, and for many years the Italians landed in the United States greatly exceeded those registered as going there; but the official record of recent years rose from 40,000 permanent emigrants in 1879 to 77,000 in 1885; and it is reported that more than 50,000 left in the first half of the year just closed. From two-thirds to four-fifths of the permanent emigration appear to be directed to South America, the republic of La Plata receiving by far the largest flood.

Thus from the south as from the north of Europe, from countries most unlike in social organisation and political institutions, there is evidence of a strong and increasing outflow; and the movement might be pronounced universal, but that in the midst of these rising and overflowing tides of human life there is one country which neither sends forth a stream nor accumulates it at home. The survey would not be honest were not attention called to the fact that the population of France neither increases nor overflows. The town population increases and the inhabitants of the country diminish, but rural France furnishes that overplus of births whence there passes into the towns the migration that augments their numbers and maintains the level of the whole mass. Perhaps it may be worth mentioning in this connection that in the Channel Islands the population increased much more rapidly even than in England up to 1851, but from 1851 to 1861 it remained stationary, and since 1861 has steadily declined. Here, however, the decline is to be explained by a continually increasing emigration to England, taking away what would otherwise have been an addition to the inhabitants of the islands.

The outflow from Europe has necessarily directed attention elsewhere, and it is time to turn to the massing of human life in America, especially in the United States. The survey might indeed be carried further. The Australian continent has been the scene of an inflow which has at times been a torrent, and of tumultuous rushes here and there, as one or another point was believed to indicate a promise of fulness of life. But the phenomena of the United States are more varied, are on a larger scale, and, while exhibiting all the influences of a mighty immigration, show, at the same time, all the fluctuations of growth and interchange of population of long-settled communities. We may trace there the streams of English and Irish, German and Scandinavian descent; but we may trace also the course of the New Englander and New Yorker, the children of Ohio and of Pennsylvania, along the lines inviting movement. The steady progress westwards of the centre of gravity of the population might

have had a different rate had there been no foreign immigration, but it would have been equally real. A word upon this progress. Recent censuses of the United States have been followed by the publication of maps graphically illustrating the leading facts of each enumeration. One of them marks the course of the centre of gravity of the national mass of life. Suppose the map of the United States to be a plane loaded with dots of equal weight for every inhabitant in them, upon what point would it balance? It has moved with surprising evenness along the thirty-ninth parallel of latitude. Lying in 1790 on the Chesapeake, somewhat south of Baltimore, it has shifted westward till, in 1880, it was on the Ohio, not far from Cincinnati, moving on an average nearly fifty miles westwards every ten years, but keeping remarkably close to the same parallel. It went a little north of it in 1870, but came back in 1880, and the apparent northward movement of 1870 is believed to have been fallacious, having been brought about by an imperfect numbering of the enfranchised coloured people of the South. When we consider the immense increase in the mass of the population, the steadiness of this line of motion is not a little strange. Floods of immigrants have descended on the Atlantic shores, the native-born citizens have swarmed away to new settlements; new discoveries led new hordes to the Pacific coast; but while the movement was apparently most scattered and irregular, there were scarcely suspected overruling causes maintaining a particular parallel as the line of equilibration of the living mass. The population thus evenly balanced has increased more than 30 per cent. every ten years, except the decade covering the Civil War; it has multiplied more than nine times between 1800 and 1880; and it is fairly certain that the enumeration of 1890 will show more than twelve times the number of 1800. Nor must we look on immigration as the sole cause of this increase. It is true that the United States have given forth few and received many, but a careful calculation would seem to show that even if there had been no influx, the population would have increased six times in eighty years. The influx has been such that out of the 50,156,000 of 1880 there were 6,680,000 foreign born, and the proportion is scarcely decreasing. We have seen how with every fresh invitation of prosperity, the floods of emigration mount in Northern Europe and descend upon America. There are jealous complaints of this deluge arising in the States themselves. More than 9,000,000 are registered as having arrived in the years 1841-80, of whom 3,066,000 are said to have been Irish, and 3,002,000 German born. How is the population, thus composed of exuberant native growth and foreign importation, distributed? If we study the physiography of the States, and note the lines of communication of river and lake; if we proceed to examine the agricultural components of the several parts, the deposits of coal and of minerals, and the curves of rainfall and of tempera

ture; and then turn from a physical chart to a chart of population we shall see how completely the mass of life has been dispersed abroad in strict relation to the means of life; while the facilities of railway and canal added to the natural lines of communication have intensified the agglomeration of men upon the most favourable and favoured spots of settlement. It is unnecessary to indicate how with the opening up of some new area of occupation humanity has rushed in to fill it; the illustrations of the growth of individual cities and of special regions are multitudinous and known; but two or three facts may be mentioned showing the process of natural selection on the part of the army of immigrants. The Germans spread from New York and Pennsylvania westwards to Illinois and Iowa, four-fifths of the whole being found in this northern central division. The Irish remain more to the east, flowing from New York into the southern part of New England. The Norwegians and Swedes seek homes akin to those they have left, in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois. The British Americans are ranged in the States confronting their native provinces from Maine to Michigan; while the English and Scotch seem to have scattered themselves abroad more widely than any other immigrants. Once more it may be noted that while more than 45 per cent. of the Irish inhabitants live in big cities, not 5 per cent. of the Scandinavians are found in them; the Germans so domiciled are less than 40 per cent., the English and Scotch less than 30 per cent. The proportion of the foreign element in the cities is twice as great as in the Union at large, and this influx has helped to increase the otherwise natural increase of the town population. It has been already mentioned how that has grown from less than 4 per cent. of the whole in 1800 to 221 per cent. in 1880; but these figures feebly reveal the real movement. If we take the North Atlantic group, consisting of the New England States, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey-what may be called the Home States of the Union-we find that in 1880 nearly one half of their 7 millions lived in cities, while in Massachusetts the proportion was two-thirds.

The movement into cities is but a branch of that great internal shifting of population which is as marked in the United States as among ourselves. It is perhaps even more marked. Although there is not such an absence of stay-at-home qualities in America as is sometimes supposed, there is an open alertness to seize new openings and to try new adventures. The older States give forth of their swarms to the newer west. More than a million of New Yorkers—a quarter of its children-had gone away from New York on census day. Virginia had sent out nearly a third of its natives. Vermont more than 40 per cent. Even a State like Ohio, which receives largely from States further east, parted still more largely with its offspring, so that the balance of native movement was half a million against it in 1880. The authoritative explanation of this outflow is that the principal

interests of Ohio are agricultural, and the State has become too densely settled, generally speaking, for an agricultural population.' We may surmise that Ohio is feeling the influence of the forces which have operated in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and the agricultural parts of Massachusetts. The population of Vermont barely holds its own; Maine and New Hampshire absolutely receded in the decade 1860-70, and though this decline may be attributed to the war, their former rates of increase have disappeared and are passing to the negative side. But for importations from Canada there would be a clear decrease. So in Massachusetts the sons of the old New England farmers move west, and the agricultural population appears to be diminishing. I have been told by more than one distinguished Bostonian that the movement would be more marked were there not a substitution in process. As the New Englanders throw up their farms Irish immigrants are found to take them, and the Puritan settlement is thus becoming a Hibernian colony. This internal movement of the agricultural population is an illustration, in connection with one occupation, of transformations everywhere active. The vast breadth of the Republic, untrammelled by any network of customs lines or even of octroi barriers, and with unbroken unities of tongue, of weights, of measures, and of moneys, allows the freest play to the attractive forces of relative superiorities of conditions of work; and the units of the living mass are quick to seize upon every centre as it becomes or presents itself as a centre of advantage. The abolition of slavery was the removal of one of the few obstacles to internal migration. Hence industries rise and shift from point to point; they move west and they move south; old forms of labour are superseded and new processes developed; and the streams of men flow to and fro as the channels are opened to their motion. No protective duty is necessary to stimulate a nascent industry in the newest of States. It springs up, if the conditions are naturally favourable, whatever may be the command of the market by well established rivals in the older States eager to crush the upstart. The workers are quick to settle wherever there is an opening, and withal the mass mounts and thickens. Some spots may be denuded. Some pursuits are found to be worthless and abandoned; and if they are not abandoned their worthlessness becomes manifested in the apparition of that dark ragged edge of humanity which straggles after the great army, that rearguard of laggards, of hindmost men, constituting the shadow of the array.

Thus has the attempt been made, though over only a narrow breadth of time and for a limited portion of the world's surface, to survey the sweep and movement of men. Beginning with little England, we saw how its inhabitants had tripled during the century, how they had swarmed into towns, leaving some parts of the outlands less thickly planted; nay, how they had passed across the seas to fasten

upon means of supply more affluent than had been left behind. Extending our vision to Scotland and Ireland, we saw an intensity of outward movement growing greater and greater in degree, but while the process of denudation was more severe it seemed the same in kind.

Passing from the United Kingdom to the European Continent, we found other nations exhibiting a like outgoing tide, in some cases of relatively not inferior volume. And turning towards Northern America, to which the great mass of this overflow of humanity was directed, we found that, in spite of the great variation in its circumstances due to this continuously increasing gulf-stream of men, there was still to be discerned the same principles of movement. As the generations appeared they spread abroad, they congregated into towns, they fastened upon every coign of vantage, they settled and shifted, they deserted old seats to throng upon better favoured spots, more newly discovered or become more accessible; and the incoming torrent of men pressing after was similarly distributed along the channels of dispersion. This peopling and unpeopling of the world has gone, and seems destined to go, the same gait across the Atlantic as here; and if we had extended our vision, if we had watched the strenuous outflow of the most multitudinous races of men in the East, if we had gone back in history and followed the course of population in the past, we should have found under all diversities. of civilisation, and struggling against all impediments of law and custom, war, slavery, international hates, and the follies of rulers and subjects, the same throes, the same struggle, the same increase, and the same outflow. But we need not insist on a practical identity of movement in so wide a range. There is room enough for observation, for speculation, and for instruction in our own times, and among ourselves, and our kinsmen exhibiting the same characteristics as ourselves in Northern Europe and Northern America. Limiting our survey within these bounds, what do we see? A passion of existence fighting against the barriers set upon its expansion. The tide of being rises and flows, searching for channels along which it may move. As the opportunities of existence are created or discovered. they are seized upon. Reveal within the range of movement some region that more lavishly rewards the toil of the husbandman, and the region is filled. Enlarge the capacity of movement, and the stream marches onwards. Bring to light richer deposits for the miner's search and the miner throngs to the new lands. Discover some machine that shall abridge the labour necessary to complete any product, and the spot where the machine is set in motion-itself

The following figures illustrate the movement in China. In the maritime province of Chekiang the population fell from 30,438,000 in 1842 to 11,589,000 in 1882, a decline outdoing all Irish experience; while in inland Szechuen it rose from 22,257,000 to 67,713,000. See Statistical Society's Journal, December 1887, p. 691. BB

VOL. XXIII.-No. 133.