What should be done is perfectly plain and generally acknowledged. You
will not find ten men of sense or information in Great Britain, out of
the precincts of the colonial and other government offices, who have
two opinions on the subject. To relieve the labour market in Great
Britain and Ireland, a great effort should immediately be made to
transport some hundred thousand of _the very poorest class_, who
_cannot emigrate on their own resources_, to Canada, the Cape, and
Australia. Wages in the latter country are from 4s. to 5s. a-day for
common, 6s. and 7s. a-day for skilled labour. Ireland is the great
quarter to which this relief should be extended: if its surplus
multitudes are taken off, the pressure on Great Britain will speedily
be abated. Ships of war, to lighten the cost of transport, should be
employed to transport the emigrants as they do our regiments.
Government barracks should be established with proper officers, to
receive the emigrants at their landing, separate the healthy from the
sick, establish the latter in proper hospitals, so as to stop the
spread of typhus fever, and forward, at the public expense, the
healthy and active to the frontier. Other officers should be appointed
there to allot to them ground, find them tools, furnish them with
seed, or provide them with employment. This should be done to at least
three hundred thousand or four hundred thousand emigrants annually for
some years to come. We should like to see the Chartism or Repeal Mania
which would long stand against such a course of humane, and withal
wise and truly liberal, legislation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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