ABSTRACT
It is a growing expectation in Ireland that we are now about to witness one of the most momentous operations of society – the removal of a people en masse to a distant shore. The half-million who have got off with no very great stir in the course of two years are but an advanced guard to the main body that follows. It must, indeed, be the most furious impulse of the direst necessity that can urge men at this season of the year to cast themselves on the deep, to brave the wide Atlantic, to be thrown on they know not what head-land or shoal, and at the best to land in a country still ribbed with ice and buried in snow. Yet we were told the other day of ten emigrant vessels taking refuge in the Cove of Cork, 1 of crowds waiting at other ports for the chance of a passage, and of multitudes ejected from their holdings, 2 and now lodging in towns with no other hope upon earth than once to put their feet on the shore of the new world. We believe it to be even as it is described. The failure of the staple crop, the burden of maintaining the victims of famine, the impossibility of paying rates upon small holdings, and the invincible objection to pay them upon holdings of any size, constitute an expellant force of which the like was never seen. Pauperism in all its bearings is depopulating the island. They who are paupers, they who expect to be paupers, and they who loathe the thought of contributing their hard earnings to be squandered upon paupers, are equally out of heart, and resolved to go elsewhere. When the mind is resolved, the means only are wanting. But among the many redeeming virtues of this intractable and unfortunate race is a strength of family affection which no distance, no time, no pressure, no prosperity can destroy; and every one of the half-million, who have safely effected their retreat consecrates his first earnings to the pious work of rescuing a parent, a brother, or a sister from Ireland.
