Emigration was regarded by many persons as the most prompt and effective remedy, under the circumstances then existing in Ireland; and government was appealed to for assistance in promoting it, by defraying the expense of passage and outfit for the emigrants. But it was thought highly probable that the emigration which would take place independently of any such inducement, would be quite as large as the United States and Canada could with advantage receive; and the government therefore limited its interference to appointing additional agents to superintend the embarkation of the emigrants, and to increasing the fund applicable to the relief of the sick after their arrival in the colonies.[151] In 1846 the emigration from Great Britain amounted to 129,851. This was the largest ever then known; but in the first nine months of 1847 the number of emigrants was 240,461, nearly the whole of them from Ireland, and proceeding to Canada and the United States, whence large remittances had been sent by former emigrants to enable their relations and friends in Ireland to follow them. Within the same period 278,000 immigrants reached Liverpool from Ireland, of whom only 123,000 sailed from thence to foreign parts; and the remainder must therefore have continued a burden on the inhabitants, or wandered about the country begging, or died of disease the seeds of which they had brought with them, and which proved fatal to a great number of other persons as well as to the immigrants themselves. It was the same everywhere.[152] [Sidenote: Mortality among the emigrants.] In the United States, in Canada and on the voyage out, the poor emigrants seeking to escape from famine at home, were assailed by disease whithersoever they turned, and very many of them sunk under its ravages. During this fearful crisis, the deaths on the voyage to Canada increased from 5 in the 1,000, to about 60; and so many more arrived sick, that the proportion of deaths in quarantine to the numbers embarked, increased from a little more than 1 to about 40 in the 1,000, besides still larger numbers who died at Quebec, Montreal, and elsewhere in the interior.[153] ----- [151] Upwards of 100,000_l._ was expended in relieving the sick and destitute emigrants landed in Canada in 1847. [152] See ‘History of the Scotch Poor Law,’ p. 205. See also ‘History of the English Poor Law,’ vol. ii. p. 393. [153] See ‘The Irish Crisis,’ p. 143. ----- [Sidenote: Financial state of the unions.]