Still more unreasonable is it to describe the "ruling classes" as standing alone in their opinion, an opinion, most unjustly ascribed to "their stupidity and selfishness," that emigration has been no calamity to Ireland.
In the first place, to call emigration a calamity, implies a confusion of ideas.
Emigration may be occasioned by a calamity: it maybe followed by disastrous consequences: but it is in itself a curative process: and to confound it with the evils to which it affords relief, would be as great a blunder as to mistake the distressing accidents of suppuration for symptoms of mortification. Plans for the express purpose of stimulating emigration have been devised and advocated from time to time by such men as Mr. Smith O'Brien, Sir Thomas Wyse, Mr. Sharman Crawford, Sir George C. Lewis,[1] and Mr. Cobden;[2] while, did
- ↑ See Appendix, p. 34.
- ↑ "But, unhappily, the maladies of Ireland have taken such deep root, that legislation cannot hope, for ages to come, effectually to eradicate them, whilst here is a mode by which hundreds of thousands of our fellow-creatures are eager to be enabled to escape a lingering death. Surely under such circumstances, this plan, which would leave us room to administer more effectually to the cure of her social disorder deserves the anxious consideration of our legislature.
"Here let us demand why some forty or fifty of our frigates and sloops of war, which are now, at a time of peace, sunning themselves in the Archipelago, or anchoring in friendly ports, or rotting in ordinary in our own harbours, should not be employed by the Government in conveying these emigrants to Canada, or some other hospitable accommodation." Extract from Cobdens Political Writings. Vol. 1. p. 83.
