Daily National Intelligencer

STATE OF ENGLAND.

FROM A LONDON PAPER.

Emigration.—Sometime ago it was a favorite sentiment among the race of contractors, at the Pitt Club, " May they who do not like the country leave it." This was applauded as a most patriotic toast. It appears that the success of the Pitt principle has brought the country to that unfortunate condition, that even those who love it are forced to quit it. Never, in the memory of man, was there any thing known like the emigration now taking place. The door of the French minister, nay, the street in which he lives, is crowded with persons applying for passports. Thousands have been issued—and those not to needy persons, but to families of large fortunes—to landed proprietors, to fund-holders, to manufacturers and artisans of eminence—and to men at the head of establishments, who are seriously contemplating the removal of their arts and their machines to places less burthened by taxation. The extent of this evil will speedily be felt, in diminished consumption- in the number of persons thrown out of employ-and in the deficit of the revenue.!

The river Thames presents a most dreary aspect. There are not 50 foreign sail to be seen on it; and the London docks, which used to require 1500 hands, do not employ 500. With an acknowledged deficiency of 17,000,000l. per annum, we hear of these emigrations, that will not cost the nation less than ten or twelve millions per annum ; and the sum spent by Englishmen abroad will act as a subsidy to our neighbors, and will be felt as such in the balance of trade, thereby raising the exchange against us.

It is little consolation to us to know that the persons thus emigrating from motives of economy, will be deceived—that they will find the expences greater than they think of---and that they might practise retrenchment much more certainly at home. All this affords but little consolation to the tradesman who will lose their custom, to the housekeepers who will be burthened with increased poor rates to support the unfortunate dependents who will be deprived of bread—and to the government that will suffer a lamentable falling off' in the taxes. And surely it is a circumstance to which parliament ought, before they separate, to turn their most serious attention.

We are on the brink of a precipice ; and nothing but a strong and decisive measure of national retrenchment, will save us from a calamity which it is frightful to contemplate. This is no time for the filling up of useless places with the sons of dukes, who either as principals or as collaterals, have been the dupes of gamblers and of money lenders. There must be an end not merely of corruption but of extravagance. And as we find from daily experience, that the volunteer yeomanry, at 4 pounds per head per annum, are as effectual in keeping the peace of the country as the dragoon guards at 150 pounds per head per annum, we must reduce our army, unless it is actually thought that a national bankruptcy would not be a national evil.