DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.22140#0299
MOVEMENTS OF LABOUR.
283
excessive growth of population ? The latter, I think, needs only
to be mentioned in order to be dismissed. No doubt if all the
British emigrants who have left were still here with us, the
country would be, to use a modern phrase, congested. But, in
the first place, voluntary emigration is not of the really surplus
population, except in the most superficial sense, and in the next
the growth of the resident population is far greater in amount
than the most liberal estimates of emigration are. The population,
in brief, which has grown and not emigrated, is far larger than
that is which has adopted this expedient.
Discontent is felt at the social or political institutions of the
country from which the emigration proceeds. It appears that the
earlier movements from England were not stimulated by the
former cause of discontent. There is no reason to believe that
the settlement of New England was due to dissatisfaction enter-
tained towards the social system of the mother country. The
Puritan fathers were not by way of being levellers. That they
treated all those who were associated for the purpose of the new
settlement with consideration, and recognized the equality of all
conditions with greater fulness than could be expected in the old
country, is obvious, and must be explained on the ground that the
necessity of common defence constrained the acknowledgment of
fairly equal rights. In the original settlement of Connecticut the
organization of the colony contemplated and practised the assign-
ment of an adequate occupation to all those families who threw in
their lot with the colony. I mention this because the Connecticut
settlement contrived to keep on good terms with the native tribes,
whose headquarters were in the neighbourhood of Norwich, the
principal town in the early history of the state, and were therefore
more secure against Indian raids than some others were. But the
settlers were neither disloyal to the home government, nor dis-
posed to modify the social laws which then ruled in England.
The English constitution, as they understood it at the time, was
not distasteful to them. The Lords were a powerless body, and
remained powerless till the Restoration, when they made attempts,
and with considerable success, to vindicate an authority for them-
selves which their ancestors in the days of the Tudors and early
Stuarts would never have dared to claim. The House of Commons
283
excessive growth of population ? The latter, I think, needs only
to be mentioned in order to be dismissed. No doubt if all the
British emigrants who have left were still here with us, the
country would be, to use a modern phrase, congested. But, in
the first place, voluntary emigration is not of the really surplus
population, except in the most superficial sense, and in the next
the growth of the resident population is far greater in amount
than the most liberal estimates of emigration are. The population,
in brief, which has grown and not emigrated, is far larger than
that is which has adopted this expedient.
Discontent is felt at the social or political institutions of the
country from which the emigration proceeds. It appears that the
earlier movements from England were not stimulated by the
former cause of discontent. There is no reason to believe that
the settlement of New England was due to dissatisfaction enter-
tained towards the social system of the mother country. The
Puritan fathers were not by way of being levellers. That they
treated all those who were associated for the purpose of the new
settlement with consideration, and recognized the equality of all
conditions with greater fulness than could be expected in the old
country, is obvious, and must be explained on the ground that the
necessity of common defence constrained the acknowledgment of
fairly equal rights. In the original settlement of Connecticut the
organization of the colony contemplated and practised the assign-
ment of an adequate occupation to all those families who threw in
their lot with the colony. I mention this because the Connecticut
settlement contrived to keep on good terms with the native tribes,
whose headquarters were in the neighbourhood of Norwich, the
principal town in the early history of the state, and were therefore
more secure against Indian raids than some others were. But the
settlers were neither disloyal to the home government, nor dis-
posed to modify the social laws which then ruled in England.
The English constitution, as they understood it at the time, was
not distasteful to them. The Lords were a powerless body, and
remained powerless till the Restoration, when they made attempts,
and with considerable success, to vindicate an authority for them-
selves which their ancestors in the days of the Tudors and early
Stuarts would never have dared to claim. The House of Commons