| Title: | Emigration to Canada. |
|---|---|
| ID | 3947 |
| Collection | Irish Emigration Database |
| File | 1841-50/11(2) |
| Year | 1848 |
| Sender | unknown |
| Sender Gender | unknown |
| Sender Occupation | unknown |
| Sender Religion | unknown |
| Origin | Canada West |
| Destination | Ireland |
| Recipient | unknown |
| Recipient Gender | unknown |
| Relationship | re emigration |
| Source | The Nation, Dublin, Saturday, 22 January, 1848. |
| Archive | The Linenhall Library, Belfast. |
| Doc. No. | 9601103 |
| Date | 22/01/1848 |
| Partial Date | |
| Doc. Type | EMG |
| Log | Document added by LT, 05:01:96. |
| Word Count | 849 |
| Genre | |
| Note | |
| Transcript | EMIGRATION TO CANADA. A correspondent in Canada West sends us a letter on the prospects of Irish emigrants in America, founded on his own practical and dearly-bought experience. Agricultural readers may ponder upon it. America, on either side of the St. Lawrence, is no El Dorado; but, at best, a land where life must be paid for in hard labour; and at that price a man is entitled to live at home:- "I am now in Canada twelve months, and my honest advice to my countrymen is, stay at home - live and die in Ireland - work in Ireland as you must work here (if you want to prosper) - and you will be happier and better off than in America. "Any man with the heart or feelings of a man must have felt deeply to have seen our unfortunate countrymen this year in Toronto. No pen can describe their wretched miserable appearance, the victims of disease and want; numbers of them lying out all night on the lake shore, crowded on the steamers coming up from Kingston, like so many hogs. I believe, on more occasions than one there were upwards of one thousand persons on a single steamer. As to labourers emigrating here, I say they can't do well; if a large number come out, the only man likely to succeed in Canada is a farmer, with say from 50L. to 100L. in his pocket on landing here, and a grown-up family, willing to work. Even such a man must give up all idea of having any sort of a comfortable life, for at least six years. Then, indeed, he would be comfortable and independent; but would any lover of his country advise such men, the bone and sinew of the land to leave it." The horrors, but hinted at by our correspondent, are fearfully illustrated in a pamphlet lately published at Montreal, written by the Hon. [Honourable?] Adam Ferrie, and addressed to Earl Grey. We cannot refrain from quoting one or two passages of this tract, to which we will take occasion to return:- "For instance (says the writer), there have been this year about one thousand persons shipped off by the agents of Lord Palmerston, who not only promised them clothes, but they were assured that his lordship had agents at Quebec, to whom instructions had been sent to pay them all from 2L. to 5L. each family, according to their numbers. On their arrival, however, no agents of his lordship were to be found; and they were then thrown upon the bounty of the government here, and the charitable donations of private individuals. If his lordship was aware of this most horrible and heartless conduct on the part of his Irish agents, and he one of the ministers of the Crown, I dare not say what he would deserve. But that charity, my lord, which " thinketh no evil," would teach me to hope that a nobleman of England, high in the confidence of Her Most Gracious Majesty, and sharing in the honorable administrations of her government, could not so far forget that duty which he owed to God, his sovereign, and his country; but that it was the wanton and authorised act of worthless and unprincipled hirelings, in whose bosoms every principle of humanity and every germ of mercy have become totally extinct. And further on Mr. Ferrie says:- "I cannot here refrain from enumerating to your lordship a few among the many instances where, in the shipment of these unfortunate beings, an utter disregard was had, not only to every principle of humanity, but even to those common decencies of life which nature in the lowest depths of degradation and misfortune so scrupulously seeks to preserve. Those emigrants from Kilkenny, Queen's County, Wicklow, and the estates of Virginia and Avon, of which Lords De Vesci and Fitzwilliam, and Major Mahon, and Captain Wandesford are the several proprietors, were in a state of fearful destitution, as well as those from the estate of Lord Palmerston. "In confirmation of this fact, I beg leave to state to your lordship that a public meeting of the citizens of St. John's, New Brunswick, has been recently held, at which it was resolved " to ship back to Ireland the decrepid, aged, and naked children and women brought to this port." These unfortunate beings constitute a part of the two shipments from Lord Palmerston's estate at Sligo. "A copy of this resolution has been transmitted to his Excellency the Governor General, to be forwarded to her Majesty's government. Comment, my lord, is here unnecessary; and language would be wholly inadequate to express the measure of that just indignation which such a development is calculated to inspire. "The last cargo of human beings which was received from Lord Palmerston's estate was by the "Lord Ashburton," the captain of which, but a few days since, died of the prevailing fever, and consisted in all of one hundred and seventy-four men, women, and youths, of which eighty-seven were almost in a state of nudity." And this Lord Palmerston is one of the ministry who have declared as their maxim that "the property of Ireland must support the poverty of Ireland." One of the ministry whose Lord Lieutenant sends round lecturers to teach the remnant of a rural population how the land may be made productive after the people are swept off! When the Whigs came in we were promised "a paternal Government;" here is a paternal Governor after the Whig model. |
