Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 1Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
History
Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 1
Bonnycastle, Richard Henry, Sir
Canada -- Description and travel; Ontario -- Description and travel
It is surprising how very easily the emigrants are misled, and how
simply they fancy that, once on the shores of the New World, Fortune
must smile upon them.
There is a British society, as I have already stated, for mutual
protection, established at New York; and the government have agents of
the first respectability at Quebec, at Montreal, and at Kingston. But
the poorer classes, as well as those whose knowledge of life has been
limited, are sadly defrauded and deluded.
At a recent meeting of the Welsh Society at New York, facts were stated,
showing the depravity and audacity of the crimps at Liverpool and New
York. The President of the Society said that, owing to the nefarious
practices against emigrants, the Germans first, then the Irish, after
that the Welsh, and lastly the English residents of the city had taken
the matter in hand by the formation of Protective Societies.
The president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick observed that in
Liverpool the poor emigrants were fleeced without mercy; and he gave as
one instance a fact that, by the representations of a packet agent, a
large number of emigrants were induced to embark on board a packet
without the necessary supply of provisions, being assured that for their
passage-money they would be supplied by the captain--an arrangement of
which the captain was wholly ignorant.
The president of the Welsh Society exhibited sixty dollars of trash in
bills of the Globe Bank, that had been palmed off upon an unsuspecting
Welshman by some rascal in Liverpool, in exchange for his hoarded gold,
and declared that this was only one of a series of like villanies
constantly occurring.
The ex-president of the St. George's Society, Mr. Fowler, mentioned a
curious circumstance connected with the history of New York. He said
that he remembered the city when it contained only fifty thousand
inhabitants, and not one paved side walk, excepting in Dock Street. Now
it had a population of nearly 400,000, and had so changed, that he could
no longer identify the localities of his youthful days.
Who, he asked, had done this? The emigrant! and it was protection they
needed, not charity. He should have added, that the great mass of the
emigrants who have made New York the mighty city it now is, were Irish,
and that the native Americans have banded themselves in another form of
protection against their increasing influence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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