year after year, "I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and that I do absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to every foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty whatever, and particularly to Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, of whom I was formerly a subject." We want our sons and brothers to be sons and brothers still everywhere, and in every sense.

V. And in bringing the paper to a close, I must touch briefly one side of the Church's duty, which I know will be more fully and more ably treated by Mrs. Joyce. I mean the emigration of children. There is a great preventive work to be done by the Church in this respect. The increasing migration of families from the country to the great towns in this land is conspiring, with other causes, to bring about a state of things which is hardly recognised even yet. "Overcrowding implies such wide-reaching realities. If people are driven by stern necessity to herd together like beasts of the field, their morals will sink to the level of beasts.

The bodies and souls of English children are being wasted-and worse, child prostitution is a cast-iron fact. We can no longer connive at such horrors. We are verily guilty, able as we are, if we do not come to the rescue of these, and before it is too late. Many Canadians are glad to adopt little children as their own. Let us see that we export flowers, grown possibly on dark soil, but yet unsullied, to bloom in many a Canadian home.

There is no time to be lost. By strengthening existing organisations we can send out children already taught of God, able to some degree to use their hands and heads. Canada will welcome these. They will be mothered there, and incorporated into the pure home-life of the country. The difference between the future of such children and many of those left at home, under such conditions as I have described, is abysmal.

If now the Church at home exerts herself, what may not be the future of the English speaking race. Already emigrants have sent back to their country from America and Canada over twenty-nine millions of money since 1848, and more than half a million from Australia since 1875. Already England's children born in other climes have shown. their readiness to shed their blood on her behalf. May we not look forward to the time when the Anglo-Saxon race shall belt the earth with a strong and hardy population. When amongst them all one tongue shall sound. When in moments of peril, or when want assails any one part, hands, English hands, shall stretch forth from the farthest portion of the earth, filling the depleted garners, or making the fatherland secure against the invading foe. What shall bind that race together as the deep pervading belief in the one faith, one baptism, one God and Father to us all. Ours it is now to see that upon individuals that faith is deeply impressed. Our own practice will engrave the words in the most lasting character. Let each individual in the Church now put his hand to this work, and there shall grow up out of our emigrants in those new lands a race as strong against infidelity as impatient of injustice. A race that seeks to prepare by holy life on earth below, a people somewhat worthy of the goal it seeks, viz., "A City which hath foundations whose builder and maker is God."

The Hon. Mrs. JOYCE, Winchester.

EMIGRATION is undoubtedly the great subject of the day for all classes, for it is the only method of solving many of the questions which are stirring the hearts and brains of both workers and thinkers at the present time, such as the increase of population and how to deal with it, the division of land, and the distribution of wealth.

According to Mr. Samuel Smith, if our population goes on increasing at its present rate before the close of the century we should have 150,000,000 inhabitants, and England would present the appearance of one continuous city from the Land's End to the Frith of Forth. He adds, by no possible manipulation of our laws could we get permanent relief for our increasing population from the soil of this little island, but, fortunately, we possess a splendid safety-valve in our prodigious Colonial possessions. The condition of that part of our surplus population, which is either habitually pauper, or necessitous from want of employ ment, requires an expenditure which, in 1883, burdened our rates to the amount of £14,091,519, we spent in charities over £10,000,000, whilst our criminals cost us another £5,000,000, the total annual amount rising to £29,091,519, and even this vast sum does not do anything permanent to alter the status of those upon whom it is spent.

Professor Seely points out that it is in the expansion of our empire alone that we can find for a rapidly increasing population the opening up of those possibilities of success which make life worth living.

How serious in its effects is the present state of things upon one part of our community, and how much active measures are required in the matter, can best be judged by the condition of at least one-fourth of our so-called working-classes, and by reference to the distress which pressed so heavily upon the inhabitants of our great cities last winter.

The clergy and their helpers in such localities can reveal tales of patient endurance, and of brave struggling against a lessening income, the two day's work a week diminishing to one day, and then a week without employment, followed by several months of no work at all, whilst furniture is sold at an absolutely cruel loss; and one article of clothing follows another to the pawn-shop, until the suit the man stands up in is all he has left, and then the mother strips herself of every article she can spare to buy food. So deplorably weakened and emaciated were many families, that at the end of the winter they had not strength to do a fair day's work if they could get it; and out of thirty-seven men examined by a doctor as applicants for the ordinary health test for emigration, only one was able to pass. "What can men do? What must become of them?" said a man of the people, speaking at a large meeting in favour of emigration, "when day after day they walk fruitlessly about begging for work until their feet go through their shoes, and they have to come home and go supperless to bed, and hear the children moaning and sobbing from cold and hunger;" and he added, solemnly, throwing out his arms in a deprecating manner, "it makes men have thoughts they don't want to have, but these thoughts are forced upon them by what they suffer."

Terrible as is the action of want of work and under-paid labour on men, it is far more fearful on women; health, sobriety, virtue, all fall

before it, and pitiable beyond words is their degradation to the imperious. calls of hunger, or to the needs of a sick husband and starving children. The words of the Rev. J. Horsley, in his report of the price paid for the labour of women, in the lowest ranks of life, whom endless drudgery and poverty have driven into crime, have an infinite pathos in their ruggedness; "shirts 2d. each, and find your own cotton, can get six a day done, working from 6.0 a.m. to 11.0 p.m." There is no time for more details, but the results of his statistics, and of my own personal enquiries at Plymouth, Bristol, Rochester, and in East London, point to the same conclusion, viz., that many thousands of women are working ten, twelve, and even fourteen hours a-day, at wages of from 4s. to 7s. per week. This matter of starvation wages forced upon women, was vigorously handled by representative working-men at a great meeting for the protection of girls recently held in St. James' Hall. Speaking from a bitter knowledge of the causes which drive so many of our erring sisters into lives of sin, they dwelt on the excessive toil caused by the long hours of labour necessary to procure the barest subsistence, and pointed out that lives bereft of joy, and energies overtaxed, lead to the use of stimulants as cheaper than food, and expose these wearied workers most grievously to the allurements of earning money more easily in vicious ways.

If we, then, admit, as we must, that the space in our island is too limited for our population, and that the poverty induced by this excess is not only a source of misery and crime, but considered from another point, on which time hardly permits us to touch, is also an enormous and profitless burden on our national resources, the question arises what course can be adopted to promote the adequate migration of those who are most fitted to succeed when transplanted from, and unsupported by the props and scaffolding of civilisation. The representatives of many amalgamated bodies of working men have spoken out on this subject, and they call upon the Government to give State aid and State direction. But the attitude of the clergy of the Church of England is far more important than might be supposed upon this (as some consider it) merely secular matter, and it is at this point that it becomes necessary to consider what is their influence in this national question.

First, then, it is of the greatest importance that they should be in a position to give their people the most reliable information as to the prospects offered by emigration, and to obtain for them the greatest amount of security in their venture, and the best spiritual care.

The admirable plan adopted by Rev. H. Huleatt, of Bethnal Green, of having classes for intending emigrants, at which they are taught cooking, baking, carpentering, and other handy work, has proved its utility by the success of the East Londoners. Planted out by the London Colonisation Society, as an experiment in the spring of 1884, at the promising station of Moosomin, in the North-West of Canada, in the autumn of that year, I saw them living in log huts, built by themselves, with their potato crop gathered in, and the hay stacked ready for their cattle. Lectures on emigration given as part of the winter course of amusement and instruction, especially when illustrated by a magic lantern, also bring the subject in an entertaining form before the people. The Central Emigration Society undertakes to provide popular lectures for this purpose.

The exodus of people from our rural to our already over-crowded urban districts is attended with the most mischievous results, both to their physique and their self-respect. A country clergyman, who has known the young men of his village from their cradles, can, if possessed of the necessary information, save them from these deteriorating influences. These are the men who ought to emigrate direct from their village homes. The farm labourer is more in demand in every colony than any other man; he makes the best colonist, for he has not been used to gas or waterpipes, or farthing faggots; and he can sink a well, or cut down a forest.

of great moment, and A ne'er do weel, or a never make a good

On another point the advice of the clergy is this is on the moral fitness of the individual. feckless and purposeless man or woman will emigrant, and such will miss the props of friends and civilisation more than their handier mates, for at best, the first experience of colonial life is rough. The selection of the fittest is not more necessary than the survival of the fittest is certain. For this reason probably the best system of wisely promoting emigration is the appointment of a committee, with a loan fund, whose enquiry into character from employer, clergyman, and district visitor, would determine the applicant's moral and physical fitness; and by no mistaken philanthropy should an inebriate or vicious person be assisted. Such a committee should be supplemented by a sub-committee of ladies for preparation of outfits, for which a working party should be organised. With regard to enquiry as to the success of emigration, the most satisfactory and unanswerable proof is the very large number of emigrants who are sent for, nominated and paid for by their friends in the colonies. Since 1873, persons living in Queensland have sent for over 18,000, and those in New Zealand for over 21,000. New South Wales has not been using nomination, but 37,768 persons have been assisted to come out by Government grants.

In travelling in Canada, opportunities were afforded by personal observation, and by intercourse with emigrants settled in various localities, of ascertaining the condition of the people, and of considering the prospects of temporal success, together with the moral and religious advantages offered by that colony. The religious sentiment which pervades the country, the strict observance of Sunday, the network of clerical ministration, the temperate habits of a very large portion of the community, the high class system of free education, and the security to life and property, are unsurpassed, and probably unequalled in any other colony. Canada now stands alone in offering free land grants to assisted emigrants. Any male adult can select 160 acres of prairie land on payment of survey fee. Men from the ranks can also rise to the highest official positions.

The question of climate is a serious one; but for those who establish themselves early in the spring in permanent work, or for those whose earnings place them above suffering from inclement weather, the winter need have no terrors. Settlers in the North West stated that neither they or their children had been the worse for the cold; and young servants have written home th it, though the winter is very long, they did not find it so trying to health as English weather; but the fact that

it is so severe makes it all the more important that emigrants should have correct information.

The excellent system of having depôts for emigrants at the great towns on the main railways which permeate the country, superintended by Government agents, who receive written applications from farmers and employers of labour, is so thorough, and the gentlemen who are working this great articulation of the channels of industry are so experienced and humane, that we want only the focussing of such information by the establishment of a department for emigration by the Imperial Government, to be able to regulate the supply to the demand, and pass on labour direct to the best market. The wages of a farm labourer, if hired by the year, are about fifteen dollars a month; if employed only during the open season, twenty to twenty-five dollars, whilst during the period of "harvest hurry," two to two and a half dollars per day are frequently given; food is supplied in all these cases. The experience of Lady Hobart's visit to the houses of 3,000 persons she had helped to emigrate is well summed up in her pamphlet, called "London's Bitter Cry hushed in Canada ;" and it can be endorsed by recent observation. "You cannot help getting on here if only you will work and keep steady;" but it is useless to send out helpless, feckless people, who are a burden to themselves and their relations, and who would only drift downward faster than at home. Still there is no reason for the cry that the best men are going out of the country, for the very best workmen are in employment, and will not sever strong ties, or break up their old homes to find new ones. It is the brother or cousin, of the "best man," who would be as good as he is if he had the work, who should go where his labour will ensure him profitable pay, and where his children will grow up to prosperity.

But the child-emigration to Canada is offering such advantages for orphans and deserted children, that full information on this point would enable the clergy to comfort many a widowed mother on her death-bed with the assurance that her children need neither suffer privations, or eventually become paupers. There are numbers of persons applying for children; who they will teach and train as members of their households; some as servants; many as on an equality with their own children, some in the fullest sense of adoption, both by name and dower. In visiting Miss Rye's Western Home at Niagara, Miss Bilbrough's Home at Belleville, Mr. Middlemore's Home at London, and Miss McPherson's Home at Stratford, an opportunity presented itself of becoming practically acquainted with the working of these establishments. Each year, before the advent of the children's parties, which vary from fifty to one hundred, the managers are beset with applications for children; they are three or four times in excess of the number brought out. "We could place more than a hundred children well, now," I was told at one home from which the spring party had been absorbed. "Look down the list of applications," said another lady; "you will see how many we are asked for." The requests for children of tender age were most interesting, because as a little creature of four and five years is quite useless as a "little help," it was clear that it must be as "a little darling to brighten the house" it was wanted, whilst the frequent petitions for children "with blue eyes and light hair" showed that a motherly pride would be taken in personal