ed to disprove
them. Second, he says: "Dr. Manning echoes the thoughtless complaints of
those who cry out against emigration as a great evil and a grievous
wrong, when he might have known, if he had thought or inquired at all
about the matter, not only that this emigration has been the greatest
conceivable blessing to the emigrants, but was an absolutely
indispensable step towards improving the condition of those who remained
at home;" and then the old calumnies are resuscitated about the Irish
being "obstinately idle and wilfully improvident," as if it had not been
proved again and again that the only ground on which such appellations
can be applied to them in Ireland is, that their obstinacy consists in
objecting to work without fair remuneration for their labour, and their
improvidence in declining to labour for the benefit of their masters. It
is the old story, "you are idle, you are idle,"--it is the old demand,
"make bricks without straw,"--and then, by way of climax, we are assured
that these "poor creatures" are assisted to emigrate with the tenderest
consideration, and that, in fact, emigration is a boon for which they
are grateful.

It is quite true that many landlords pay their tenants to emigrate, and
send persons to see them safe out of the country; but it is absolutely
false that the people emigrate willingly. No one who has witnessed the
departure of emigrants dare make such an assertion. They are offered
their choice between starvation and emigration, and they emigrate. If a
man were offered his choice between penal servitude and hanging, it is
probable he would prefer penal servitude, but that would not make him
appreciate the joys of prison life. The Irish parish priest alone can
tell what the Irish suffer at home, and how unwillingly they go abroad.
A pamphlet has just been published on this very subject, by the Very
Rev. P. Malone, P.P., V.F., of Belmullet, co. Mayo, and in this he says:
"I have _seen_ the son, standing upon the deck of the emigrant ship,
divest himself of his only coat, and place it upon his father's
shoulders, saying, 'Father, take you this; I will soon earn the price of
a coat in the land I am going to.'" Such instances, which might be
recorded by the hundred, and the amount of money sent to Ireland by
emigrants for the support of aged parents, and to pay the passage out of
younger members of the family, are the best refutation of the old
falsehood that Irishmen are either idle or