PRESSURE ON THE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE. At the Nisi Prins
Court, as the Worcester Assizes, there were only lei causes for trial ; which gave one cause to every forty-six of the weasel 014 big the Court.— Worcester Haab,.
We are too thick upon the ground in this country. During time of great commercial excitement, the pressure is not felt a much ; but every recurring period of stagnation brings home tle conviction that we want room, and tread upon each other's heel.. Look at the lawyers—the majority earn less than enough to pay the rent of their chambers; at the medical profession—every country town, as well as the metropolis, swarms with expensively. educated young gentlemen, who would think a "gratis patient". godsend; at the At any—unless you have powerful Tory interest at the Horse Guards, your five hundred pounds for an Ensign': commission will be contemptuously rejected; at the Navy—Lordi of the Admiralty will humbly beg a Commander to make one of their lads his Midshipman ; at the Church—curates are " as plenty as blackberries," and the necessities of growing-up families, sons without "prospects" and girls without portions, are compelling many rectors, who never read half a dozen sermons in their lives, to commence in the decline of life to "do their own duty." Which- ever way we turn, we see symptoms of that "uneasiness" so gra- phically and powerfully described in England and America.
The remedy for all this suffering ?—fint such is the true name for what is called " uneasiness." It may be found in the trans- fer of industry and capital to the virgin soils of salubrious colonies. To a certain extent this transfer is in progress. Powerful Par. liamentary interest has induced the Government to sanction some well-considered schemes of emigration; and men of rank as well as capital, are disposed to think with CICERO, that there is "did melius, nihil uberius, nihil homine libeto dignius," than " agricul- ture" in Australia or New Zealand.
But although the advantages of emigration are familiar to t certain class of well-informed capitalists and economists, who are preparing to profit by them, the subject is one which receives but a very small portion of public attention, compared with its mil portance, and the means it offers to men at' small property to escape from lasting difficulty, at the sacrifice of temporary ease. Out of the 302 barristers who at Worcester divided seven causes amongst them, probably 250 possess themselves, or have friends who could furnish them with, a small capital, which energy and industry in the colonies would convert into the means of maintain- ing and forwarding a family in life. Out of the 302, probably not more than the odd two dream of any thing of the sort. The other 300 look forward to a miserable existence in nasty cham- bers, and the ultimatum of a marriage with their housekeeper or bedmaker.
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