EFFECTS OF EMIGRATION

Dunstan Times, Issue 957, 20 August 1880, Page 3

EFFECTS OF EMIGRATION

We (the Freeman) remember some years ago reading in an American paper a calculation of the money worth of cadi emigrant enteiing the country. The average of age was taken, the amount of labour of which bo was capable, the number of years lie was likely to supply that labour, the produce of it, the children with which ho would supply the State, and the various other circumstances connected with him, and the result arrived at was that each immigrant, beside any money ho might bring into the country, was himself a considerable source of gain to his adopted country. We forget the exact sum at which this gain was valued, lint it was a large one. And the calculation was ptfectly leasomihle. If immigrants to America add to the lichos of that country, emigrants from Ireland proportionately diminish the wealth and resources of our island. For, who is it that emigrates ? la it not the young, strong, healthy, and energetic farmer? Is d not the industrious, modest, fine young wour-.n of the country ? These form the real producers of all the riches of our island, the hone and sinew of our population, in fact, the best element

anion" our people. Ami if the respectable, well-conducted, intelligent, and athletic portion of our people is continually drained away, if the best of our life-hloo 1 is tapped will not the country become so much the weaker ? Will there not be remaining in it a continually increasing proportion of the weak, the unhealthy, the idle, the vicious, the stupid, and the immoral ? And we actually perceive by our statistics that the number of suicides, of the insane, of criminals, ot drunkards, of cripples, of diseased, and of destitute is greatly on the increase. Could any country stand such a drain on such a small papulation? The best of our people are taken away from us by emigration, our money is drained away by unfair taxation and absentee landlords, outstock and agricultural produce goes over to the English market, production is discouraged by evictions and unfair treatment of the farmer, and if we show the least discontent at this state of things forced on us by an alien peop'c, we are told that nothing will satisfy us, and that it is all according to the laws of political economy. It is well for the Irish farmer not to trouble himself about such political eco nomy, but to unite with his fellow-farmers in an cflort to remedy such a vicious condition of things. And notwithstanding the immense tide of emigration, the misery arid destitution in the west and south, and the large tracts that have been depopulated, we do not believe that the case is irremediable, or that the Celtic race can be swept from our island, as .is fondly hoped by inany of our kind hearted neighbours. ’ The Times and other portions of the English Press will once mure be disappointed, for it will not bo true any more than in ’47 that the Celts shall “have gone with a vengeance.”