SECTION CCLVI.. Immigration.

IMMIGRATION.

B. Calling for immigrants. This is a means all the more in favor, inasmuch as it provides the country not only with new-born children, but with mature men, who frequently, when they come from thickly peopled and highly civilized countries, promote the industries of the country of their adoption, and become the teachers of a higher civilization. I need only mention the inhabitants of the Low Countries, who in the twelfth century settled as agriculturists in Northern Germany,[256-1] and in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries in England, as artisans; the German miners and inhabitants of cities, who, during the middle ages, colonized Hungary, Transylvania[256-2] and Poland,[256-3] and the French Huguenots, who fled to the Independent Protestant countries. Nearly all the remarkable Russian princes since Ivan III. have endeavored in this way to induce Germans to settle in Russia, and, for the same reason, Peter the Great refused to give up his Swedish prisoners of war.[256-4] The great Prussian rulers have cultivated the policy of immigration on an extensive scale, and thus maintained the original character of their parent provinces as the colonial land of the German people.[256-5] [256-6]

Such immigrants have been generally accorded a release from taxation and from military duty for a number of years; a proper measure since the state thereby only surrendered an advantage temporarily which it otherwise would not have possessed at all. Where the land of the state receiving the immigrants was still almost valueless, it has frequently been made over in parcels to well-to-do colonists without consideration.[256-7] Assistance exceeding these limits is a very questionable boon. It should not be forgotten that the influx of men who bring no capital whatever with them, and who are not good workmen, is of no advantage. Nor are they always the best elements of a people who emigrate. They are very frequently men who, through their own fault, did not prosper at home, and who come to the new country, with all their old faults.[256-8] This is, of course not true of those who emigrate from their attachment to some great principle; for instance, it is not true of those who emigrate in search of freedom of conscience. These may become, provided they are in harmony with their new environment, a support and ornament to their adopted country.[256-9] But there is always danger that they may not be able to adapt themselves to their new economic relations, and that thus they may in consequence succumb to the pressure of circumstances.[256-10]

Oriental despotisms have frequently endeavored to assure themselves the possession of newly conquered countries by transporting its most vigorous inhabitants in whole masses to a distant part of their old empire. Thus, the Jews were carried into Assyria and Babylon; the Eretrians into Persia; the inhabitants of Caffa by Mohammed II.; the Armenians by Abbas the Great. The Russians, too, undertook a similar transportation of people under the Ivans.[256-11]

C. The prohibition of emigration, which, in the case of serfs, vassals and state-villeins, it seems natural enough, was very usual in periods of absolute monarchical power. Thus, for instance, Frederick William I. forbade the emigration of Prussian peasants under penalty of death. Whoever captured an emigrant received a reward of two hundred thalers.[256-12] The public opinion of modern times is very decidedly opposed to this compulsion, which would make the state a prison.[256-13] "A really excessive population would still find an exit to escape, namely, through the gates of death." (J. B. Say.) The statesman, on the other hand, who opposes the withdrawal of political or ecclesiastical malcontents should take care, lest he act like the physician who prevents the discharge of diseased matter from the sick body, and causes it to take its seat in some vital organ.[256-14] Hence, even where emigration is considered detrimental to the country, no governmental condition should be attached to it, except that the person desiring to emigrate should give timely notice of his intention, and receive his passport only after it has been shown that he has discharged all his military duties, paid his taxes and his debts.[256-15] [256-16]

The severe penalties imposed in Athens on emigration, after the defeat at Chæronea, when general discouragement threatened the state with total dissolution, belong to an entirely different mode of thought.[256-17]