In truth, the proofs of this general impoverishment are now so numerous and decisive, that they have brought conviction home to the minds of the most obdurate, and, with the exception of the free-trade leaders or agitators--whose fanaticism is, of course, fixed and incurable--have produced a general distrust of the new principles. A few facts will place them in the most striking light. The greatest number of emigrants who had previously sailed from the British shores was in 1839, when they reached 129,000. But in the year 1847, the sacred year of free trade and a fettered currency, they rose at once to 258,270. In 1848 they were 248,000. The number this year is understood to be still greater, and composed almost entirely, not of paupers--who, of course, cannot get away--but of the better sort of mechanics, tradesmen, and small farmers, who, under the new system, find their means of subsistence dried up. The poor-rate in England has now risen to £7,000,000 annually--as much in nominal amount as it was in 1834, when the new poor-law was introduced by the Whig government, and, if the change in the value of money is taken into account, half as much more. A _seventh_ of the British empire are now supported in the two islands by the parish rates, and yet the demands on private charity are hourly increasing. Crime is universally and rapidly on the increase: in Ireland, where the commitments never before exceeded 21,000, they rose in 1848 to 39,000. In England, in the same year, they were 30,000; in Scotland, 4908; all a great increase over previous years. It is not surprising crime was so prolific in a country where, in the preceding year, at least 250,000 persons _died of famine_, in spite of the noble grant of £10,000,000 from the British treasury for their support. We extract from the _Standard of Freedom_ the following summary of some of the social results which have followed the adoption of liberal principles:--
"STATE OF ENGLAND.--One man in every ten, according to Sir J. Graham, a short time ago was in receipt of parish relief in this country; but now, it appears, from a return up to June last, it is not 10 per cent, but 11 per cent of the population who receive parochial relief; for the persons so relieved amount to 1,700,000 out of 15,000,000. £7,000,000 was raised annually for the relief of the poor in England, and £500,000 in Scotland; and, taking the amount collected for and raised in Ireland at £1,860,957, it makes a total of £9,460,957, as the sum levied annually in the British empire for the relief of the poor, or three times the cost of the civil government, independently of the cost of the army and navy. Besides the regular standing force, there is the casual poor, a kind of disposable force, moving about and exhausting every parish they go through. In 1815, there were 1,791 vagrants in one part of the metropolis, and, in 1828, in the same district in London, they had increased to 16,086. In 1832, the number was 35,600, which had increased, in 1847, to 41,743. Moreover, there is a certain district south of the Thames, in which, for the six months ending September 1846, the number was 18,533, and which had increased, during the same six months in 1847, to 44,937. And, in the county of York, in one of the first unions in the West Riding, in 1836, one vagrant was relieved, and, in 1847, 1,161. This affords a pretty strong, dark, and gloomy picture of the state of destitution prevailing in this country."--_Standard of Freedom._