The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1833. IRISH EMIGRATION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1144, 4 September 1883, Page 2

The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1833. IRISH EMIGRATION.

The British Government cannot manage Irish affiairs at all. All their attempts are proving great failures. When it was represented that the people in certain districts were starving they set aside a sura of money for their relief, A deputation of the Bishop* of Ireland waited upon the Lord Lieutenant and represented to him that the best way this money could be spent was in reproductive works. They suggested that the money should be lent to farmers on interest for the purpose of draining their lands. These farmers could give employment to the poor, and the improvements they would effect in their lands would enable them to repay the money back to the Government. It was pointed out that in this way the Government would not lose anything, while a good deal of land which was useless would bo made valuable. But the Government would not see it in this way. They would not give one half-penny except for the purpose of emigration, and so they set about sending the people out of the country to America as fast as they could. The Lord Lieutenant took great interest in the emigration scheme. Ho used to go to wherever emigrants were being put on board a ship and manifest great interest in their welfare, and even go to the extent of handing the children over the gangway to their mothers. He left nothing undone to make expatriation from the home of their fathers as pleasant as possible, but, after all, the scheme failed. The Land League did not believe in the policy of wholesale emigration, and a deputation of the American League waited upon the President of America, and lepresented to him that England was pouring Ihe helpless and poor of Ireland into the country, and exhorted him to stop it. The following resolution passed at the Philadelphia Convention was, amongst other things, laid before President Arthur— 4 That the policy of Eng’and in first reducing the Irish peasantry, and sending them penniless to the United States, dependents open American charity, is nn natural, inhuman and an outrage upon the American Government and people. We respectfully direct the attention of the United States Government to this iniquity, protest against its continuance, and instruct tho officials who shall be chosen by this convention to present our protest to the President of the United States and respectfully but firmly to urge that it was the duty of the Government to decline to support paupers whose pauperism began under, and is the result of, English mis-Government, and to demand of England that she send no more of her paupers to these shores to become a burden on the American people.’ About this time two shiploads of emigrants, moat of them taken out of the Irish workhouses, were landed in New York. The American law, passed in 1882, is that the Commissioners shall inspect persons landed from vessels, and if they find them objectionable, shall retransport them back to where they came from. Under (his statute the New York Commissioners sent the Irish emigrants sent out by the British Government back again to Ireland, where they were thrown homeless and friendless on the pier. One man and his family of six children, the eldest of whom was eleven, were from 4 o’clock to 7 o’clock at night huddled together on the pier, when a poor woman, who made her own livelihood by selling eggs, came to their assistance. Amongst those landed was a blind man, women with two and three children, and others equally helpless. Their condition was most deplorable. The Bishops of Ireland met again, pointed cut that the land once occupied by the people had been taken from them and devoted to the feeding of cattle and shsep, and urged upon the Government

the necessity of establishing public works. The Government have this time, finding thev cannot get rid of the surplus stock of human beings, decided on giving out-door relief—a thing which they had refused until paupers were returned from America. Thus it is that matters are being managed in Ireland at present.