I have just learnt that the emigration to Canada is going on from this coast to a very considerable extent but I am afraid in a manner which must soon tend to excite a strong feeling against it. Parishes are shipping off their paupers, – they go in crowded vessels without any surgeon on board & when they arrive they will find themselves upon the wide world without any person to direct them & forward them to the spot where Government according to your plan would give them allotments & secure them the means of subsistence till those plots be made available. There are 70 such persons going in the vessel from Maryport in which my brother has taken his passage.

160 are gone in another. And there are vessels from Workington & Whitehaven freighted in a similar way. These are ships which go out in ballast to return with timber.

You see by this how much the disposition of the country accords at this time with the plan you sent me.

Now tho it is never desirable for Government to interfere with what it desires to be done without its interference. This appears to me one of those cases in which the object must be frustrated without a proper superintendence being exercised. Immediate relief from the surcharge of the poor is not all which must be looked to want to have regular outlets opened by which the xxxxx may overflow may always be carried off. But emigrants who go out in this manner must inevitably send back, if they do not xxx some of them bring back the most discouraging reports. This will be a great evil looking at it from a mere political light, & if humanity were out of the question. But xxxx both for policy & humanity <the sooner> a regular system be set in action the better; for we are come to think that stage in society in which emigration is as necessary a part of our xxxxxx social system, as swarming is of the economy of a beehive.

Gifford I suppose is not well enough for business. He has not written to me since his illness, & the question I asked of him a fortnight ago whether he would have a paper upon the state of Sp. & Portugal has not been answered.