Lord Derby doubted whether State-directed emigration would be popular among the working classes in the colonies. Possibly not. As, however, no attempt would be made to force emigration on a colony, the only effect of this would be that the stream of State-assisted emigration would for the time cease to flow in the direction of the colony which did not desire it. Amid our numerous colonies there would always be some which would desire it, and in time the demand for labour would again arise in the colony which considered itself for the time overstocked, and the stream would once more be permitted to flow in that direction.

"If the Government do not see their way to adopting at once a system of adult male emigration, might they not commence by assisting the emigration of women and children? The colonial workingman could not possibly object to the emigration of women. Many of our present social difficulties arise from the preponderance of the female over the male sex in this country. Respectable women are always welcomed in the colonies, and by withdrawing female competition wages would rise in this country. Child emigration, too, would prove a great saving to the ratepayer of this country; as proved by Mr. S. Smith, M.P., in a recent article in the Nineteenth Century, where he shows that whereas each child in an industrial or workhouse school in this country costs £25 a-year, one such payment is sufficient to train and place a child in a capital situation on a farm in Canada, where he would be brought up in a healthy, homelike atmosphere, with a prospect of becoming himself a landowner when he grows up. "Whether the Government like it or not, they will have to