“In 1846, which was a year of larger emigration than any that preceded, it amounted to 129,851. But in the year 1847, the emigration extended to no less than 258,270 persons, almost the whole of them being Irish emigrants to North America. It is scarcely necessary to observe, that history records no single transportation at all to compare with this. The migrations of classical antiquity were only the slow oozings of infant tribes from one thinly-peopled district into another rather less peopled, or rather more fertile. In actual figures, the irruptions from the north into southern Europe were never at one time more immense.
“The Government only refrained from assisting this tremendous emigration at the urgent demand of the land-owners, because it was going on as fast as possible without its aid. Bad legislation had driven the Celt to the ocean, and Saxon ingenuity had furnished him a boat to cross it. Famine and pestilence were at his heels. It was unnecessary to do more. What drowning wretch will not catch at a straw? What patient idiot not fly from misery and death? Yet how monstrous to call such flight—‘the _sauve qui peut_ of a panic-stricken army’ spontaneous!
“It was the _unavoidable_ misfortune of this emigration to be _entirely spontaneous_. The cry was—‘_Sauve qui peut!_’ To send out more emigrants at the public expense, or to promise assistance to all who should emigrate, would only have been adding fuel to the fire, or like attempting to expedite the movement of a crowd locked in a narrow passage, by applying fresh numbers and pressure to its rear. A miserable necessity dictated that, as a general rule, emigration should be allowed to retain its spontaneous, unassisted character. * * * The fever, _it is a painful satisfaction to reflect_, raged with equal force in all the British vessels, whether well or ill-provisioned and appointed. Fearful, too, as the loss of life was, both at sea and on landing, _it was not greater than was reasonably to be expected_ from the mortality which prevailed, under circumstances rather less unfavourable for health, in the workhouses and other accumulations of Irish at home.”—_Times, Jan. 1848._
History, in its blackest pages, records nothing more horrible than the miseries of the passage; yet while we are maudlin over the horrors of the slave-trade, we “reflect, with a painful satisfaction, and reasonably expect” the more dreadful sufferings of our fellow-citizens. The slave-dealer—before the Abolition made it necessary to stow three cargoes in one ship—calculated to land at their destination four-fifths of his cargo; and it was thought sufficiently shocking that 1 in 5 died on the passage. But the mortality on board the Irish emigrant-ships was greater. Many vessels, from their rotten state, perished altogether, with from 200 to 300 passengers. This rarely happens with a slaver, as the vessels are necessarily of the very best construction. But, of those who escaped shipwreck, 1 in 3, and 1 in 4 died on the passage from fever, and one half the remainder suffered from disease. The “Laren” from Sligo sailed with 440 passengers—108 died and 150 were sick. The “Virginius” sailed with 496 passengers—158 died, 186 were sick, and the remainder landed feeble and tottering. It could hardly be otherwise, when vessels built to pack 200 emigrants sailed with twice that number; so that they are described to be worse than the blackhole of Calcutta. And this was the emigration which the British parliament—which laboured to put down the slave-trade—declared itself willing to encourage, had it been necessary, from any backwardness in the wretched Celts, to avail themselves of it, and which a British Minister coolly declared it would have been inhuman and unjust to interfere with.
