An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800Cusack, Mary Francis
History
An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800
Cusack, Mary Francis
Ireland -- History
The causes of emigration, as one should think, are patent to all.
Landlords do not deny that they are anxious to see the people leave the
country. They give them every assistance to do so. Their object is to
get more land into their own hands, but the policy will eventually prove
suicidal. A revolutionary spirit is spreading fast through Europe.
Already the standing subject of public addresses to the people in
England, is the injustice of certain individuals being allowed to hold
such immense tracts of country in their possession. We all know what
came of the selfish policy of the landowners in France before the
Revolution, which consigned them by hundreds to the guillotine. A little
self-sacrifice, which, in the end, would have been for their own
benefit, might have saved all this. The attempt to depopulate Ireland
has been tried over and over again, and has failed signally. It is not
more likely to succeed in the nineteenth century than at any preceding
period. Even were it possible that wholesale emigration could benefit
any country, it is quite clear that Irish emigration cannot benefit
England. It is a plan to get rid of a temporary difficulty at a terrific
future cost. Emigration has ceased to be confined to paupers.
Respectable farmers are emigrating, and taking with them to America
bitter memories of the cruel injustice which has compelled them to leave
their native land.
Second, _How misery leads to emigration_. The poor are leaving the
country, because they have no employment. The more respectable classes
are leaving the country, because they prefer living in a free land,
where they can feel sure that their hard earnings will be their own, and
not their landlord's, and where they are not subject to the miserable
political and religious tyranny which reigns supreme in Ireland. In the
evidence given before the Land Tenure Committee of 1864, we find the
following statements made by Dr. Keane, the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Cloyne. His Lordship is a man of more than ordinary intelligence, and of
more than ordinary patriotism. He has made the subject of emigration his
special study, partly from a deep devotion to all that concerns the
welfare of his country, and partly from the circumstance of his
residence being at Queenstown, the port from which Irishmen leave their
native shores, and the place where wails of the emigrants continually
resound. I subjoin a few of his replies to the questions proposed:--
"I attribute emigration principally to the want of employment."
"A man who has only ten or twelve acres, and who is a
tenant-at-will, finding that the land requires improvement, is
afraid to waste it [his money], and he goes away. I see many of
these poor people in Queenstown every day."
"I have made inquiries over and over again in Queenstown and
elsewhere, and I never yet heard that a single farmer emigrated and
left the country who had a lease."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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