but this industrious and populous country, notwithstanding its longcontinued deadlock of political parties, its strikes and its riots— indeed, perhaps partly because of all these-has sent abroad no less than 497,000 of her children, or 8.6 per cent. of her remaining native population. It is true that the greater part of these have not gone far from home-for 463,000 of them are distributed in neighbouring France, Germany, and Holland; but still, according to the postulate, Belgium has a balance to her credit at foot of these tables amounting to 351,000. To lessen the tedium of figures, the nearest round numbers are mentioned in each case where the result is not thus sensibly affected. A salient proof of the worthless character of emigration statistics generally is to be found in the Belgian returns, which show that in the five years ending with 1884 immigration exceeded emigration by 10,014-a manifest absurdity when pitted against the statistics here given. Perhaps the returns are merely for the port of Antwerp.

Scandinavia.-Next come Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, which are grouped to avoid indefinite extension of the table. The net population of the three countries may be taken at 8,450,000; and in addition thereto 795,000, or 9.4 per cent. of the existing generations, are living abroad. Of these 440,000 are in the United States, and 306,500 are Swedes living in Russian Finland. The average emigration from Scandinavia is now over 77,000 annually. If we glance back to the beginning of this century, we shall see the population of Norway scarcely increasing, and its marriages fewer than in any country but Switzerland. Since then many of the old customs and laws that hampered agriculture have disappeared, manufacturing centres have arisen and flourished, and the growth of the population has proved quicker in such centres than in the country districts. Between 1865 and 1875 the population increased 14 per cent. side by side with constant emigration, and in 1869 there was but one pauper in a hundred, while at home in England there were 5 per cent. To Sweden belongs the credit of the earliest and best-regulated European census, which was taken in 1748, and repeated at first every three, and then every five years. Here is the place to recall the uncomfortable fact that five years later our own House of Lords threw out a bill for an English census on the ground that it was anti-Scriptural and un-English, and we had consequently to wait nearly half a century for the first counting of our numbers. At the same time that these three northern countries send out a host of 795,000 they harbour only 51,000 foreigners, and these are chiefly Germans residing in Denmark (33,152), and Finns and Russians in Sweden and Norway; so that the balance to the credit of the Scandinavian communities in the Not-at-Home account of the world is no less than 744,000.

But we shall now have to deal with much larger figures, and before

taking the case of our own England let us first examine the German empire.

Germany. The vast emigration from Germany in modern years, and its causes, are now commonplaces of contemporary history. No pause is needed here for dwelling upon the innate force and healthy stamina of the breed, its domestic family habits, its calm selfreliance, and its adventurous spirit.

Keep not standing fixed and rooted,

Briskly venture, briskly roam;
Head and hand, where'er thou foot it,
And stout heart are still at home.

The results are a high rate of increase in the population, and a readiness to seek afar relief from the heavy pressure of military service under which Germany and her leading antagonist are now both groaning. The statistics of German emigration are not quite satisfactory, but between 1880 and 1884 a yearly average of 172,750 left the mother countries of the empire by Antwerp, Bremen, Hamburg, Havre, and Stettin. The vast majority of these went to the United States, and the greater portion of the remainder to South America. It is significant that between 1881 and 1883, 125,156 emigrants renounced their German nationality. It is thus not surprising to find the table exhibiting 2,601,000 Germans outside their fatherland, of whom 2,000,000 are in the States, and 110,000 in South America. In Belgium live some 43,000; among the Scandinavians 38,000; in Switzerland 90,000; in Holland 42,000; and in France, where sullen hostility to the Prussians' is but illdisguised, no fewer than 82,000. While the German empire can reckon over two and a half millions of her children in foreign climes, or 5.7 per cent. on the aggregate population of 45,200,000, she affords a subsistence to 293,000 natives of other countries, including 118,000 Austro-Hungarians, 35,000 Scandinavians, 28,000 Swiss, and only 17,000 French, who thus take but a pocr revenge of the 82,000 Germans who have peacefully continued the invasion of French territory. The balance in Germany's favour is thus very large-2,324,000—and is only exceeded by our own.

United Kingdom.-It is difficult to avoid terms that may seem inflated when referring to the statistics for the British Isles. A whole section-somewhat heavy, it must be confessed-of modern literature is developing and enveloping the idea of 'Greater Britain.' We have occupied the lands. Perhaps, after all, the most forcible way of putting the facts is to say boldly that English must indubitably be is even now-the leading language of the globe. It was a saying of Coleridge's that Shakespeare can never die, and the language in which he wrote must with him live for ever. This is somewhat too finely poetical for the present purpose. Shakespeare and all English literature apart, it is because the language echoes from

millions on millions of English mouths all over the habitable earth and its oceans, that it lives and must live everywhere, whether as the pure well undefiled, or as 'American,' Pidgin, Brother-tongue, or even as the Negro-English of Surinam.

It may confidently be said that the number of born natives of the three kingdoms now living out of them is largely understated in these tables as 4,200,000; and still every possible source of information has been consulted; but the exact figures will never be elicited until we have an international census union. The figures are, however, vast as they stand, and put England easily at the top of the scale of nation-making, people-giving races. A native of the famous old Comté de Foix was once asked by Napoleon what his country. produced. Men and iron,' said the Gascon. What flimsy fustian this retort becomes if the little department of the little Ariège, as the country now is called, be compared in the light of these statistics with Britain and its Black Country. In the 4,200,000 given above no account has been taken of 215,374 soldiers and sailors on foreign service; but adding these, we arrive at the almost incredible fact that every eight persons of the home population are now represented abroad by a native-born Britisher,' who has not been chosen as their representative by the ballot or by any other known mode of election, and who goes about his business in quiet neglect of our glorious constitution' and the supremacy of the House of Commons.' This great world-movement, which will be the making-or the marring-of the mother-country's future, proceeds calmly, silently, as the operations of nature, behind the backs of noisy do-nothing political parties, as certainly, as inevitably, as the planets roll around the sun.

The number of foreigners resident in England is unexpectedly small, falling short of 294,000, or, deducting 10,564 sailors, merely 283,000, being about 1 in 124 of the population. These are chiefly merchants' clerks, teachers, servants, German bakers, Russian and German tailors, French milliners, and Italian musicians. The balance in England's favour (3,885,000) in the account here produced is therefore very large indeed, being more than half again as great as that of Germany, which is nearly a third more populous than England. It may be noted here that the Census Tables of 1881 (vol. iv. p. 105) show that in fifty years at least 8,880,000 emigrants, foreigners included, left our shores.

France. While the balance in favour of all the other chief European countries is more or less considerable, the balance is against France, and it is besides a very large balance on the wrong side. The facts relating to the population of the country and its almost stationary condition are common problems of economics, but it is not usual to see them treated from the present point of view. As a matter of fact, considerable want of knowledge on the subject

may be detected, and the following passage is found in a recent publication by no means devoid of usefulness. Mr. James Bonar, in his Malthus and his Work,' observes that

6

There are few foreigners in France; the numbers of the French people are neither swelled by immigration nor reduced by emigration. . . . Taking the absence of immigration as balanced by the absence of emigration, we are brought to the conclusion that the population of France is stationary by its own deliberate act (pp. 167, 168).

This writer seems to rely for this portion of his information upon the Times, but one need only turn to that excellent repertory of statistics the Almanach de Gotha' (p. 715), to find that there were in December 1881 no less than 1,001,0902 foreigners resident in France. To these, in considering the French population proper, we must add 77,046 other foreigners who have naturalised themselves in the country, and we thus find every thirty-fourth human being in France to be a 'stranger'—a sufficiently surprising and significant fact. In 1872 the foreigners were only 1 in 49, in 1861 they were 1 in 75, and in 1851 the proportion was but 1 in 94. It will thus be seen that the peaceable invasion of France is proceeding at a sure and increasing rate. It is as though nature, abhorrent of a vacuum, as the maxim of the ancients' maintained before Galileo's time, were stepping in to fill the gaps which the French make or suffer in their own population. Rural France, as distinguished from urban, actually lost 820,000 of its population between 1876 and 1881, as M. Toussaint Lona has shown. Turn now to the handy figures furnished year by year in the Annuaire des Longitudes' (p. 484), and it will be seen that the 1881 population of 37,672,048 must be reduced by 1,078,136 in order to arrive at the actual numbers of French people in France, which is thus found to be only 36,593,912. The population in 1876 was 36,905,788, from which 836,264 foreigners must be deducted; and comparing this with the corresponding numbers for 1881 above given, it will be seen that the slender yearly increase of the French population proper is now only 29 per 10,000, instead of 41 as given by the Government statisticians.

So much for immigration. As to emigration, it is true it does not go on upon a large scale, but from 1878 to 1884 there was an efflux of 30,000; and the annual amount is on the increase. But these statistics of French emigration are not in any way to be relied. on. In the first place they only deal with French ports, and with North and South American destinations; but numbers doubtless depart from Belgian, German, and English ports for those and other continents, and probably go to swell the emigration statistics of the three countries mentioned at the expense of the credit of France, for the meagre tale of emigrants just quoted seems wholly insufficient

2 The Annuaire Statistique for 1883 gives eighty less.