SUMMARY 79 
country, though not inside the British Empire, much 
mote developed, mote accessible than or at least 
equally accessible with any of the countries within 
the Empire, offering mote opportunities except for 
those who had the instincts of pioneers and almost 
equal opportunities for them also, and presenting a 
special attraction not only to the growing number of 
emigrants who came through from the continent of 
Europe to the Atlantic ports of Great Britain, but also 
very especially to citizens of the British Isles who, like 
the Irish, had no love for the British Government. 
The result was that for about the last half of the nine- 
teenth century the volume of emigration from the 
British Isles to the United States, either direct or 
through Canada, very greatly exceeded the total 
number of those who went to all the home-giving 
countries of the Empire put together. 
It has been abundantly seen? that in the beginnings 
of the Empire the planting of colonies was recom- 
mended as a means of providing employment and 
relieving distress. ‘The same motives, more solidly 
grounded, operated eatly in the nineteenth century, 
and have been operating more or less ever since, not 
least at the present day. The substitution of machinery 
in factories for cottage industries, which brought 
starvation to the handloom weavers of northern 
England and southern Scotland in the years between 
Watetloo and the Reform Bill, gave a great impetus to 
crossing the sea. ‘There must have been in these years 
mote widespread and acute distress than at any time 
in the sixteenth, seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. 
1 See above, pp. 5, 6, 14, etc.