ABSTRACT
So great is the anxiety felt by the poor labouring classes in this part of Connaught to escape from a country where every effort of industry is crushed by the pressure of enormous poor rates and taxes and where the owners of land seem determined not to come to any equitable accommodation with the tenant class, to one where freedom and prosperity await them, that such of them as have employment on the Drainage works here, have adopted the following novel and extraordinary mode of enabling themselves to emigrate: – It appears they are paid fortnightly, and when the pay night arrives, about three hundred of them assemble and pay sixpence each into a general fund. A number of tickets, corresponding with the number of persons present, are then placed in a hat, and on one of them the word “America” is written – all the rest being blank. A ballot then takes places, and the lucky drawer of the prize ticket, has his passage to America paid for him, and receives a small sum to subsist him for some time after his landing there.
