EMIGRATION

(Lat.) Migration is the movement of an individual or a number of people from one place of residence to another: emigration, their abandonment of their former home; immigration (a word of modern coinage), their settlement in their new one. Emigration is, in modern times, chiefly regarded in the light of a mode of relieving a country or district labouring under exce of population. The prejudices which formerly existed against it, on account of the lo of inhabitants thus sustained bya country, have long been removed, both by severe nece ity, and by the progre of economical knowledge. The power of reproduction in the human race is sc great, that the vacuum occasioned by any practicable amount of emigration is speedily filled. It was long ago observed that those provinces in Spain from which the most constant emigration to America was going on (Biscay, Aslurias, .) were among the best peopled. The subject of emigration, considered in an economical light, has been amply discu ed by Hir W. Horton (1835 *c.) by [s. 411]