THE CANADIAN SHIP-FEVER. From the Times.

New Zealander, Volume 3, Issue 185, 8 March 1848, Page 3

THE CANADIAN SHIP-FEVER. From the Times.

The great Iriih famine and pestilence will have a place in that melancholy series of similar calamities to which hiitoriani and poets have contributed so many harrowing details and touching expression!. Did Ireland poisess a writer endued with the laborious truth of Thucydides, the graceful felicity of a Virgil, or the happy invention of De Foe, the event! of this miserable year might be quoted by the scholars for ages to come, together with the pent up multitudes of Athens, the distempered plains of Northern Italy, or the hideous ravages of our own great plague. But time is ever improving on the past. There is one horrible feature of the recent, not to say the present, visitation, which is entirely new. The fact of more than a hundred thousand souls flying from the very midst of the calamity, across a great ocean to a new world, crowding into insufficient vessels, scrambling for a footing on a deck, and a berth in a hold, committing themselvei to these worse than prisons, while their frames were wasted with ill-fare, and their blood infected with diieaie, fighting for months of unutterable wretchedness against the elements without and the pestilence within", giving almost hourly victims to the deep, landing at length on shores already terrified and diseased, consigned to encampments of the dying and of the dead, gpieading death wherever they roam, and having no other prospect before them than a long continuant of these horrors in a still farther flight across forest* and lakes, under a Canadian sun and a Canadian frost,— all these circumstances beyond the experience of the Greek historian or the Latin poet, and such as an Irish pestilence alone could produce. By the end of the season, there is little doubt that the immigration into Canada alone, will have amounted to 100,000; nearly all from Ireland. We know the condition in which these poor creatures embarked on their perilous adventure. They were only flying from one form of death. On the authority of the Montresl Board of Health, we are oaabled to state that they were allowed to »lup in numbers two or three times greater than the same vessels would have presumed to carry to a United States' port. The worst horrors of that slave-trade, which is the boast or the ambition of this empire to suppress, »t any cost, have been re-enacted in the flight of British subjects from their native shores. In only ten of the vessels that arrived at Montreal in July, four from Cork and six from Liverpool, out of 4,427 passengers, 804 had died on the passage, and 847 weie sick on their arrival— that is, 847 were visibly diseased, for the reiult proves that a far Urger number had in them the seeds of disease. • The Larch, 1 says the Board of Health, on August 12, ' reported this morning from Sligo, sailed with 408 passengers, of whom 108 died on the pasa&ge, and 150 were sick. The Virginius sailed with 496,-158 died on the passage, 186 were sick, and ibe remainder landed feeble and tottering— the Captain, Mutei, and Crew were all sick. Ihe bUckhole of Calcutta was a mercy compared to the holds of thess vessels. Yet, simultaneously, as if in reproof of those on whom the blame of all this wretchedness must fall, foreigners, Germans from Hamburgh and Bremen, are daily arriving, all healthy, robust and cheerful.* This vast, unmanageable tide of population thus thrown upon Montreal, like the fugitives from some bloody defeat, or devastated country, has been grea'ly augmented by the prudent, and, we must add, most necessaiy precautions, adopted in time by the Uni ed States, where more stringent sanitary regulations, enforced by severer penalties, have been adopted to save the ports of the Union from those very horrors which a paternal Government has suffered to fall upon Montreal. Many of these pest-ships have been obliged to alter their destination even while at sea, for the St. Lawrence. At Montreal, a large proportion of these outcasts have lingered from sheer inability to proceed. The inhabitants of course have been infected. From the official returns of burials at Montreal, for the nine weeks ending August 7, it appears that in the city there died during that period 924 residents, and 896 emigrants, making a total of 1,730 deaths. Besides these, 1,510 emigrants died at the sheds, making a grand total of 3,^40 in the city of Montreal and its extempore Lazaretto ; against only 488, including emigrants and residents, for the corresponding weeks last year. A »till more horrible sequel is to come. The survivors have to wander forth and find homes. Who can say how many will perish on the way, or the masses of houseless, famished and half-naked wretchei, that will be strewed on the inhospitable snow when a Canadian winter once scti in? Of these awlul.occurrcntei some

account must be given. Historians and politician! will some day sift and weigh the conflicting narrations and documents of this lamentable year, and pronounce, with or without affection, how much is due to the inclemency of Heaven, and how much to the cruelty, heartleisness, or improvidence of man. The boasted institutions and spirit of this empire are on trial. They arc weighed in the balance. Famine and pestilence are at the gates, and a conscience-stricken nation might almost fear to ser — " the writing on the wall." We are forced to confess that, whether it be the fault of our laws or our men, this new act in the terrible drama hai not been met ai humanity and common sense would enjoin. The result was quite within the scope of calculation, and even of cure. * * * * But simp'e as precaution was, what has been done ? In the first place, our usual regulations as to the pro. portions of passengers to tonnage are lax enough. Then, it appear* that British vessels bound to Canada, owing to the recent repeal of a former enactment, need not, and do not, take out Surgeons. Then, as a correspondent informs us, the Inspectors appointed to see that emigrant ships, chartered from British ports, observe such regulations as there are, have generally failed in their duty. Into this part of the businesi, we hope that Parliament will not omit to enquire. Fnrther, notwithstanding the assurances given to the Legislature last sesiion, it is quite clear that due preparation has not been made at the Colony. As the Montreal Board of Health justly complains, tbere have been no adequate funds, or even competent authority, provided for the crisis — the establishment at Grosse Isle has been ridiculously insufficient, nor have any measures whatever been adopted or thought of for the transmission of the helpless and destitute crowd beyond Montreal, much less for their employment and settlement. Such neglect is an eternal scandal to the Biitish name, nor do we see any way to escape the opprobrium of a national inhumanity, except by taking the earliest and most effective means to rectify pasterrori, and prevent their recurrence.