emigrates or assists to emigrate young
people of either sex who cannot pass a severe medical examination and
be declared mentally and physically sound. This demands serious thought;
for the puny, the weak and the unfit are ineligible; our colonies will
have none of them, and perhaps our colonies are wise, so the unfit
remain at home to be our despair and affliction.

But our colonies demand not only physical and mental health, but moral
health also, for boys and girls from reformatory and industrial schools
are not acceptable; though the training given in these institutions
ought to make the young people valuable assets in a new country.

The serious fact that only the best are exported and that all the
afflicted and the weak remain at home is, I say, worthy of profound
attention.

Thousands of healthy working men with a little money and abundant grit
emigrate of their own choice and endeavour. Fine fellows they generally
are, and good fortune attends them! Thousands of others with no money
but plenty of strength are assisted "out," and they are equally good,
while thousands of healthy young women are assisted "out" also. All
through the piece the strong and healthy leave our shores, and the
weaklings are left at home.

It is always with mixed feelings that I read of boys and girls being
sent to Canada, for while I feel hopeful regarding their future, I know
that the matter does not end with them; for I appreciate some of the
evils that result to the old country from the method of selection.

Emigration, then, as at present conducted, is no cure for the evil it
is supposed to remedy. Nay, it increases the evil, for it secures to our
country an ever-increasing number of those who are absolutely unfitted
to fulfil the duties of citizenship.

Yet emigration might be a beneficent thing if it were wisely conducted
on a comprehensive basis, which should include a fair proportion of
those that are now excluded because of their unfitness.

Are we to go on far ever with our present method of dealing with those
who have been denied wisdom and stature? Who are what they are, but
whose disabilities cannot be charged upon themselves, and for whom there
is no place other than prison or workhouse?

Yet many of them have wits, if not brains, and are clever in little
ways of their own. At home we refuse them the advantages that are
solicitously pressed upon their bigger and stronger brothers. Abroad
every door is locked against