tions of Europe; and, as if in anticipation of some still greater crisis yet to come, Australia, groaning under a plethora of new-found wealth, starying Croesus-like in the midst of her gold, cries aloud to Europe for men to till her fields, to tend her flocks, or to satiate their restless energies by the exploration of her fifteen hundred miles of auriferous mountains. That her call is already being answered, any one may see at a glance. What city of our own country but is now sending forth her hundreds, what town her tens, what village or hamlet of the land but has some family or individual bound for the land of promise? And, what is worthy of notice, the emigration-fever-like all fevers when they become epidemic-has now mounted from the lower classes to the higher; and the same relief seems about to be afforded to our world of clerks, and milliners, and better artisans, as has already relieved the pressure, and kept up the wages, of our suffering peasantry.

There is one remarkable and significant fact connected with the recent gold-discoveries. They have all been made in the uttermost parts of the earth," and within the bosom or on the shores of an ocean of all others the least whitened by the sails or cheered by the presence of civilised man. Although abounding with islands and archipelagos transcendent alike for beauty and productiveness-where Nature has been enriching the soil by the fall of the leaf throughout fiveand-forty centuries,-where sun and breeze, wood and water, shore and sea, present endless prizes to the enterprise of civilisation,-no maritime power, no sea-loving people, has ever arisen upon the shores of the Pacific Ocean. From the dawn of history, that longest of the earth's sea-boards has sent forth no navy to explore, and occupy, and reclaim the fertile isles and semi-continents which compose that sixth division of the globe which we now entitle Oceanica. Does it not seem as if those vast ocean-realms have been reserved by Providence until now, in order that they might become the empire of that free Anglo-Saxon race, which, cradled

in a little island of the West, has come to throw its mighty arms around the whole world?

But Providence ever attains the greatest ends by the simplest means; and the same agency of Gold which is so remarkably influencing the destinies of Europe, promises to accomplish a phenomenon, less important, it may, be, but even more astounding, for the Asiatic world. The disasters resulting to China from its late war with us, the increase of taxes-the injury to commerce and employment in certain provinces of the Empire-and the general unsettling of large masses of the people, as well as the partial infusion of European ideas in the maritime districts,—have greatly broken up the apathy and stay-at-home spirit of the Celestials; and no sooner did news of the gold-discoveries reach Canton, than the mania seized upon them also; and the remarkable spectacle was witnessed of a nation which had kept itself apart from the rest of mankind since the Deluge, coming forward to compete with its fellow-races for the spoils of the earth. The Hermit Nation came forth from its cell into the world, to wonder and be wondered at, but above all, to work, and to show that there is an industry and intelligence in the population of China which some even of the European nations would do well to acquire.

"Quite a large number of the Celestials," said a Californian journal a year ago, "have arrived among us of late, enticed hither by the golden romance which has filled the world. Scarcely a ship arrives here that does not bring an increase to this worthy integer of our population; and we hear, by China papers, and private advices from that Empire, that the feeling is spreading all through the sea-board, and, as a consequence, nearly all the vessels that are up for this country are so for the prospect of passengers. A few Chinamen. have returned, taking home with them some thousands of dollars in Californian gold, and have thus given an impetus to the spirit of emigration from their fatherland which is not likely to abate for some years to come.'

Hitherto, the Chinese who left their own country generally found their way in native vessels to Borneo, Siam, and the Straits, where their situation has not always been safe or satisfactory, and their junk voyages almost invariably attended with great risk, as well from pirates of divers nations as from the common perils of the sea. Despite these difficulties, however, for several years past a large and rapidly increasing emigration of Chinese labourers has taken place to different parts of the adjoining islands and countries, amongst others to Singapore, the emigration to which dependency of the British Crown was chiefly conducted in the following singular manner-The owner of a native junk engages with a number of free but penniless Chinese to convey them to Singapore, upon the understanding that, on their arrival at that port, they will each engage with such residents as are in want of servants or labourers, to work for them for a certain period without other remuneration than board and lodging, the parties so engaging them paying as an equivalent the amount of their passage-money from China; the length of servitude thus freely, and on both sides cheerfully, bargained for, being dependent on the relative state of supply and demand. This mode of obtaining labour by private enterprise has proved quite successful, and has been carried on, to some extent, for many years, with the sanction of the British authorities, and to the satisfaction and profit of shipowner, employer, and employed.

The reports of those Chinamen who first returned from California to their own country, of the good reception they had met with there, and of the perfect security of the voyage when made in the ships of the Foreigners, gave an incalculable impulse to the emigration-fever of the Celestials; and they are now finding their way, in great and increasing numbers, not only to California, but to Australia, Cuba, and our West Indian colonies. To these latter, a supply of labour suited to a tropical climate is a desideratum of primary importance, if we would not see those magnificent islands irremediably relapse, as they are fast doing, into a state of wilderness,

and of such labour China is both willing and anxious to yield an unlimited supply. An experiment to test the practicability of importing Chinese labourers into Cuba was made about four years ago, when there were introduced into Havanna 581 Coolies from Amoy-638 having embarked there, and 57 having died on the passage and in quarantine. These labourers were distributed among various planters as apprentices, receiving four dollars each amonth. At the commencement, several of the masters were dissatisfied with them, but experience soon proved their value; and recently, a number of the most intelligent proprietors in Cuba, consulted by the local authorities, declared that they had found the Chinese in their service "laborious, robust-almost as much so as the best Africans, more intelligent, and sufficiently docile, under good management." They moreover expressed themselves desirous that immigration should be encouraged, and ready to take a certain number into their employment; and some of them deem it quite possible to cultivate their properties with Chinese exclusively. In consequence, a contract has been made a few months ago by an English house (Syme, Muir, & Co. of Amoy) to introduce eight thousand Coolies into the island, and the entire number is by this time subscribed for

the planters engaging to pay the importers at the rate of 125 dollars a-head-the Coolies to be apprenticed for eight years, and to receive four dollars a-month each during the time of their service. We understand that there is every prospect of such emigration assuming a permanent and increasing character, and one of the best-informed of our English firms (W. P. Hammond & Co. of London) entertain "great hopes that the docility and usefulness of the free agricultural labourers of the province of Fokhien, in China, will be the means at no distant time of entirely superseding slavery in the great island of Cuba."

A desire to avail themselves of a similar arrangement has already been evinced by the planters in British Guiana, and in other of the West India colonies; and the avidity with which

the Chinese would embrace such an opportunity of honest industry, may, perhaps, be best evidenced by the following extract from the private letter, dated in March last, of a British merchant settled at Amoy :

"We have just despatched a vessel with 410 laborers for Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. They are all fine, strong, able-bodied young men, engaged for three to five years at three dollars per month, with food. &c., for men, and at two to two-and-a-half dollars per month for

boys.

The only sorrowful parties were those whom we were compelled to reject from disease or deformity. These we placed a distinguishing mark upon, but this they removed, and presented themselves for

selection three or four times. We were obliged to send them from alongside in hundreds, and the last day the rush was so great we thought they would have

almost taken the vessel from us.

This

demand for labour is a most providential thing for this province, the poverty and destitution of which is incredible."

Here, then, we have, on the one hand, a starving population of Celestials, craving for employment, and, on the other, valuable estates capable of adding to the wealth of the British Empire by the production of immense quantities of sugar, cotton, coffee, &c., almost going out of cultivation, and their formerly affluent proprietors praying for the very labor which is so earnestly asking for employment; and is it possible that prejudice or a mistaken philanthropy will be allowed to step in and prevent an interchange of benefits so mutually desirable? We cannot think it. Any one who does not believe in the Voltairian doctrine that the world is ruled by Chance, must be struck with the cheering coincidence that this very period, when for the first time the final extinction of the African slave-trade seems almost within our reach, should be the season at which Providence is throwing open to the world the immense supplies of labour which for thousands of years it has been rearing secluded in a distant corner of Asia. China Proper and its dependencies contain some three hundred and sixty millions of inhabitants considerably above one-third of the whole population of the globeand could furnish, out of its mere floating population, a much larger

number of free labourers than the whole west coast of Africa could furnish of slaves. Moreover, an immense proportion of the Chinese contrive to exist only by means of the most hard and unflagging labor,-living from hand to mouth, and devouring everything, however unclean in our eyes, which can conduce to the keeping A bad together of soul and body. season, or an overflowing of their canals and rivers, reduces mi lions to absolute starvation, from which all the efforts of the Imperial Government are insufficient to extricate them

myriads perishing, from such causes, every fourth or fifth year. It is a work, then, of pure benevolence to both the Chinaman and the Negro, if you can at once relieve the hunger of the former and preserve the freedom of the latter,-if you can convey the one to those fields of remunerative industry which are to him a Paradise, and retain the other in his cherished deserts from which there is so little temptation to remove him.

Australia is another field to which Chinamen have begun to flock, and where their services are almost equally desirable. They have a most acute scent for anything in the shape of money, and the temptation of the auriferous Blue Mountains of Sydney was more than Chinese nature could resist. In the Australian intelligence contained in the Times of 19th March last, we read that " many cargoes of Chinamen have been sent for, and one shipload had just arrived. They will be employed at good wages as shepherds, while thousands of honest families in England are yearning for the means of procuring the same advantage, and that, not as paupers, but with a feeling that they would faithfully make repayment." The hardship to our own countrymen so correctly expressed by the Times is now greatly removed, by the steps recently taken to facilitate their passage to the sheepwalks and gold-fields of our Antarctic possessions; and no one can doubt their great superiority to the Chinese,-not, perhaps, in patient industry and thriftiness, but in most of the qualities which characterise a good subject and citizen in a free state.

Australia, with her unrivalled store

of the precious metals, is certain ere long to receive a large influx of those roving Celestials; but at present it is in the El Dorado of California that they are to be seen in the greatest numbers and to the best effect. The latest intelligence from China shows that the fame of the American gold-region has already become widely diffused throughout the south-eastern provinces of China. 66 During the past month," says a letter dated from Canton on the 27th of March last, "there has been not a little excitement among people connected with foreigners, and who have means of learning anything of the gold-hills,' more especially among those whose acquaintances in California have described the advantages of the country, or, on returning to China, have spread the report of their good fortune. Letters from Chinese in San Francisco and further in the country, have been circulated through all this part of the province; and the accounts of the successful adventurers who have returned would, had the inhabitants possessed the means of paying their way across, have gone far to depopulate considerable towns. The number of men that have gone, and that are now preparing to embark, is so considerable, and the employment which has been thus unexpectedly afforded to shipping, at a moment of great depression of freights, is so remarkable, that we have no doubt the subject will excite the attention of all who are interested in the trade of the East." The writer then gives a detai ed list of the ships despatched from Hong-Kong, Macao, and Whampoa, with Chinese passengers, between the 1st of January and the 27th of March this year; and another list of vessels which had not then sailed, but which were under engagement to go, -with the number of men taken by each. The total number of emigrants gone and going amounts to 16,807, which, taking the average of passagemoney at forty dollars a-head, would give a passenger-freightage of 672,280 dollars. The total number of ships gone and going was sixty, of which one-half had sailed before the date of the letter. The details which accompany this statement leave no doubt of its accuracy, and it is still further corroborated by the last letter of the

Times' Correspondent, dated San Francisco, May 2, which states that immigrants" are continually arriving in batches of 500 to 1000 in every vessel from China, and 10,000 are reported as ready to come forward in a fleet of merchantmen from Canton and other ports."

One circumstance connected with this Chinese emigration to California, is peculiarly favourable to the carrying trade between these two countries, —namely, that the men who emigrate intend to return, and will probably go to and fro. In no case, as yet, have Chinese families removed from thecountry, and all the social habits and national feelings of that people are opposed to such a step. Almost without exception the emigrants are adult males, and their purpose is simply to gain something by their labor in California, with which to return to their native country. It is thus that emigration begins in all countries. The young and strong, the restless and buoyant, are the class to whom the aids and comforts of home are least necessary, and on whom its ties hang lightest. It is amongst them, accordingly, that the first emigrants are found; but seldom do even they, on embarking, resign the prospect of revisiting the land of their birth and the home of all that the heart holds dearest. Even when such pioneers of civilization were the bold sons of our own land, and when the region they steered for was the distant Antipodal settlements of New Zealand and Australia, how few of them went out otherwise than with the view of accumulating a hard-won competency, and returning with it to spend his after-life amidst the merry "homes of England." A majority of them failed, indeed, and remained in the land of their adoption; but the recollection of our readers will, we doubt not, fully corroborate our statement when we say, that it is only within the last few years-and, more peculiarly, since the monetary and commercial difficulties of 1847-that whole families have begun to forsake our shores, or that the mass of our emigrants have gone forth with the resolution of never again setting foot upon the soil of Britain.

As it has been with us, so will it,