THE IRISH EXODUS.

New Zealander, Volume 9, Issue 776, 21 September 1853, Page 3

THE IRISH EXODUS.

I Firm the “Times.”) There are marvels of history as well as of nature and art. Twenty years ago the ancient migrations from the forests and snows of the north to the southern peninsulas of southern Europe, it not wholly incredible, were at least beyond the reach of modern ideas. That half-a-million people, who were not so entirely destitute but that they had provisions for a long and ditlieult journey, should suddenly and spontaneously leave the homes of their fathers, were those homes only excavations in the n ck or the soil, and commit themselves to a wandering the only end of which must be a bloody encounter with the most disciplined armies in the world was beyond the understanding of a civilised age. We knew, indeed, as a matter of annals and antiquarian research, that Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Italy, Spain, and the “ Isles of the Gentiles,” were for centuries gaining population by every wave of human progress. Even at a time when the rude navigator feared to lose sight of land, and crept cautiously from one familiar haven to another, the Mediterranean was continually traversed by the exiles of war, poverty, or oppression. But these events belonged to another phase of humanity—to a time of heroes, miracles, and tables, of monstrous traditions, of living demigods ; and with that reflection, if we could not disbelieve such a state of things as half the human race on the move to and fro, we nevertheless put it aside as a thing out of our sphere. Twenty years have made the early history of Europe neither incredible nor strange. Mow tor some time, year by year, these islands have annually poured out to the very ends of the earth a multitude that may vie with any one annual migration recorded in history. These isles, neither forest nor rock, nor marsh, nor snow ; neither poor nor rude; not wanting in arts or industries ; not destitute of habitations or the necessaries of life, have sent out an even stream of a thousand a day, no longer expelled by hunger or disappointed ambition, but seeking only to better their fortunes. Emigration has ceased to bo a desperate, foolish, and discreditable act. It is no longer the resource of the criminal and the outcast. Twenty years ago the son of evin a numerous family, did he but breathe a wish to emigrate, was placed under the ban of suspicion and contempt, regarded as one born to break his mother’s heart, and nevertheless forbidden, under the sternest maledictions, to persevere in his unnatural scheme. So great is the change that now the accomplished, the high-minded, the wealthy, the comfortable, are often the first to emigrate ; and and it is the common remark of emigrants that almost anywhere in an Australian colony they will meet with bettor society than in the cramped and narrow-minded circle of an English country town. Indolence and stupidity are left behind to settle on their lees and finish out those vulgar quarrels which form so large a part of middleclass life in this country. Genius and nobility of mind are winging their flight to a freer and more genial atmosphere. The Irish emigration is not only of the character we have described, but has other aipl still more honovuuhle qualities, All that strength of affection, and those domestic virtues, which distinguish that unfortunate race, and which have made them hug their poverty with too fatal a grasp, are now exerted in augmenting and dignifying the tide of adventurers. But a few years ago the members of a family used to club their scanty means to enable some one to go as the precursor of the rest. That vanguard has now secured the ground, and draws the rest of the coluinn after it with increasing momentum. “ Every

American post,” we arc told by a Galway journal, “ brings its supply* of’remittances, upon the receipt of which crowds of emigrants hurry away with scarce a moment’s delay or preparation. It seldom fails that a letter from an Irish emigrant in America is followed by the departure of one, two, throe, or more of the relations at home.” They are described as no longer broken-down tenants, hut persons well enough to do in the world, whom the success of their friends in a strange land stimulates to follow. The Emigration Fund used to be the savings of many* years, and too often what was due to the landlord. It is now, in the majority* of cases, supplied either as we have described, or by* those who having received assistance even from strangers at home, now return it with interest, and the repayment of such loans amounts, wc are told, to many* thousands. Such a migration, it might be expected, would find its own level—that is, when the diminished numbers left behind found they had no longer too many rivals in quest of employment. But thus far the end seems farther off than over.

A Clonmel paper assures U9 that whole parishes are preparing to leave that part of the country. “ Within the last ten days upwards of 150 persons of both sexes left Clonmel upon Bianconi’s long cars to Waterford ; and when we add to these, if in our power to do so, the numbers which have passed in either their own or hired cam or dray's, the amount would he incredible. Such it is, however, and where it will end no one can tell. The number of letters from all parts of the States passing through the Post-office here, and dispersed all over the country*, is amazing, and it is calculated that 96 at lea*st out of every 100 contain remittances to pay* the passage of either one, twb, or even three out of every family*. Spring work is very brisk, and better wages are giving, and the result is, that from the flight of the people, the scarcity* of labourers, and the advance in the labour markets, neither Her Majesty's recruiting officer nor the sergeant of the Hon. East India Cornpang, though the latter hare lowered the standard, cun' do business. IVo idlers, and therefore no recruits.”

It was to us no unreasonable anticipation that the whole native Irish race, so impulsive, so given to movement, so clinging and affectionate, should abandon a soil which the history of a thousand years assures them is no home for them. All the feelings of family, of race, of language, and reli-c-ion, that have hitherto kept the Irishman a ho ne, now conspire with equal force to send hin t abroad, lie holds to the multitude either to stay or to go, and as the latter is now the fashion, he will fly as obstinately as before he stood his ground. Nor is it any superstitious and fanciful idea,, but a plain account of facts, that just now is indeed the very time that this long-husbanded store of people should be poured upon the hitherto desert regions of the world. That Providence which, in its inscrutable ways, has lately warned the Irish people in a terrible manner from their own ancient home, invites with equal kindliness to new homes, to rising industries, to fertile fields, to golden strands, to lengthening roads, to upstart cities in every part of the Avorld. Never did all the earth so murmur with industry, and, comparatively with the sad tenour of human life, so “sing with gladness,” as just now, when the vast reservoir of Irish population has suddenly burst its strong dams and flooded the world. It is impossible not to connect two things so double and apposite. We are aware that in speaking thus coolly and summarily of a national expatriation, we incur the suspicion of hard-heartedness, as if we were only too glad to see the backs of tire Irish, and their place desolate. On the contrary, so long as there appeared no sufficient certainty of employment at their journey’s end, we have always deprecated wholesale schemes of etnigragration. But the suspicion altogether is only the relic of a now exploded prejudice. It is better for a man of strength and spirit that he should leave a country which for one reason or another does not afford him proper opportunities, and go where the world is more open. But the change, after all, is from one field of out-door labour to another. The plough and the spade, the pick and the shovel, are much the same in Missouri as in Tipperary ; the onjy difference being that in the former place the labourer has enough for himself and his family, and in the latter has not. There are migrations that are indeed a change. When the English labourer is driven into the heart of the metropolis or a manufacturing town —when the child is suddenly transferred from hedge-rows and cottage gardens, from brooks and rural sounds, to the jar of machinery and the whirl of the spindle —that indeed is a change; and such a change, in one form or other, is suffered at one time or another by a large proportion of the English and Scotch population. Compared with this, what is the hardship of passing from a turf cabin to a log hut, or from potatoes to Indian Corn ! No ! We should not talk thus composedly of these vast and momentous changes were we not deliberately and strongly of opinion that, at all events, they are for the good of the emigrants themselves, and particularly the Irish emigrants. If we had any shade of misgiving on the subject, it is for those who remain at home.