The Causes of Emigration

From the year 1815 to the present day, the British emigrants leaving the United Kingdom for various parts of North America may be fairly estimated as totalling slightly more than twelve million souls. ¹ This vast exodus of people has been brought about by the interplay of a variety of forces, the principal no doubt among these being the phenomenal increase of population which overtook the nation in the early years of last century. Various authorities roughly estimate the inhabitants of the three kingdoms in 1700 as being eight millions, nearly fifteen millions in 1801, and over twenty-seven millions in 1851. ² From these figures, it is evident that the population increased in the first half of the nineteenth century twice as rapidly as it did between 1701 and 1801. During these years of expansion, we find that the amount of emigration also grew by leaps and bounds. At the end of the first decade of the century, when the people of the United Kingdom roughly equalled sixteen millions, ³ emigration stood at twenty thousand; in the second decade there were twenty millions ⁴ of people against one hundred and twenty-one thousand emigrants; in the third decade, the figures were twenty-three millions ⁵ 39and six hundred and twenty-one thousand; and in the fifth decade they rose to twenty-seven millions ¹ and one million five hundred and seventeen thousand. From the foregoing data we may note that, as the population grew during this period of fifty years, so the exodus became more extensive.