A SCIENTIST'S VIEW OF IRISH EMIGRATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 47, 21 March 1884, Page 25

A SCIENTIST'S VI EW OF IRISH EMIGRATION.

Phofessok Baldwin, a distinguished scientist and an English Government official, who has been studying the Irish question, writes as follows :—: — •' In the present state o£ Irish affairs no true statesman should countenance any gentleman, rr committee of gentlemen, who would rob the country of its life's blood, and send to the wilds of Canada or the piairies of the United States men and women who ought to be employed in producing wealth in the land of their birth, and who would bequeath to Ireland drones and the descendants of drones. Let there be no parleying with visionary and inexperienced men, who, perhaps without knowing what they are doing, would lower us as a people for all practical purposes. " The utter failure of these apostles of social reform is clearly evidenced by the fact that emigration, even though encouraged and aided by them, has not been most brisk, where, according to them, it is most needed. In the ten years ended March 31, 1881, the percentage of the population who emigrated from Mayo was a fraction less than from Down. [The figures— Mayo, 10-6 per 1000 of the population ; Down, 109 ; Tipperary, 18*5 ; Limerick, 190 : Longford, 20*4.] " There is another species of emigration which has been attempted of late, namely emigration in families. Mr. Take is the apoßtle of the school which is working out this system. " I have recently read Mr. Tuke's report of ' A Visit to Connaught in the Autumn of 1847,' and extracts from reports he made in 1846, and afterwards published in the • Transactions of the Central jßelief Committee of the Society of Friends.' Ido not find in these any indication of the policy of family emigration. It will, I believe, be found that I was the first to give shape to this species of emigration as a means of permanently relieving congestion. With additional knowledge and experience I now repeat that emigration in families, with rigid rules for the consolidation of vacated holdings, is the only species of emigration which can relieve congestion. But it never occurred to me that any humane gentleman, or committee of gentlemen, would undertake the awful responsibility of transplanting entire families to Canada or the United States without making adequate provisions for settling these families in new homes on the other side of the Atlantic. Before those gentlemen proceed any further I implore them to consider carefully and seriously the responsibilities of their position. They thoroughly believe they are doing a great service to the State. According to my experience, they are, unintentionally, the most active abettors of disloyalty who have of late taken part in Irish affairs."