and no one has deplored in more emphatic terms than myself the circumstances which compel so many noble-hearted Irishmen to leave the land of their birth.[1] But to lament an emigration you are unable to arrest, and which is composed of those you cannot employ, is a useless waste of feeling. There are few human passions with which I have greater sympathy, or which I can better understand, than the love of home; but in this life no one can arrange his destiny altogether to his taste; and to sally forth and battle with the world is one of the most universal conditions of existence. It is all very well to talk pathetically of the hardship endured by the Irish peasant in quitting the home of his childhood, but to dwell for ever in the home of one's childhood is almost the rarest earthly luxury which can be mentioned; not one man in ten thousand expects to enjoy it; no woman desires it. Law in France, custom in America discourage such permanent arrangements, while in England they are only within the reach of a comparatively small minority.
Expatriation is undoubtedly a great calamity, but emigration does not necessarily imply expatriation. Hundreds of those who go, return, and if the greater number stay it is only because they prefer to do so. Nor, when Providence spread out the virgin prairies of the New World, or stored up the golden treasures of Australia, can it have been intended that attachment to the natal soil should
- ↑ See Appendix, p.
