Note 259-5 — Chapter III

Benjamin Franklin, in 1751, estimated the aggregate number of English inhabitants in the North American colonies at 1,000,000, of whom only 80,000 had immigrated into the country. Hence, from 1790 to 1840, the United States, the promised land of European emigrants, received only about 1,500,000 emigrants. From 1820 to 1859, the number (according to Bromwell and Hübner) was 4,509,612; according to a report of the New York Chamber of Commerce (1874), 9,054,132 since 1824. An annual immigration of 100,000 was reached for the first time in 1842. According to the census of 1870, there were in the United States 5,567,229 persons born in foreign countries, of which number 1,690,410 were born in Germany, 1,855,827 in Ireland, and 5,550,904 in England. The aggregate emigration from the British empire, which unquestionably possesses most colonies and the largest marine, was, on an average, between 1825 and 1835, only about 55,000; 1836 to 1845, over 80,000; in 1845 alone, over 93,000, while the yearly excess of births over deaths between 1841 and 1848, according to Porter, was in England and Wales alone, on an average, 169,000. During the succeeding years emigration received an extraordinary stimulus (which changed the proportion) in the influence of the discovery of the Californian and Australian mines, and in the Irish famine. Hence the emigration was, at least,