THE BISHOP OF ACHONRY ON MIGRATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 10, 27 June 1884, Page 25

THE BISHOP OF ACHONRY ON MIGRATION.

The followeng letter has been addressed by the Most Key Dr. MacCormack totke managing directors of the Migration Company :—: — Ballaghadereen, 23rd April, 1884. My Dear Professor Baldwin,— l am prepared, as you are already aware, to take 50 shares in the stock of the "Land Purchase and Settlement Company," and I am happy to state that the priests of the diocese are in sympathy with the project. We await an opportunity of conferring with you, that we may have the advantage of exchanging ideas, and of shaping ovv organised action with the aid of your exceptional experience. The new company is launched at a f avourable'moment, when the Premier himself expresses a hope that Irish "decay and depletion " may at length happily cease, and that Ireland may henceforward Bhare in the general prosperity of England and Scotland. If England, then, is no longer to play the old role of stepmother to Ireland, let the Premier and his Ministers encourage the Settlement Company in reinstating the people upon the land of their fathers. The people being once comfortably settled upon the land, industry will be stimulated, and capital soon flow over our poor country, so long the prey of poverty, and the victim of injustice and neglect. Already inquiry is being made by -Irishmen abroad (natives of this diocese) who are desirous to invest their savings in Irish land, help to develop Ireland's resources, and rest their bones with the dust of their kindred. And inquiry, too, is being made at home by Irishmen who are anxious to invest the capital of labour in the land of their nativity-, the land they love and prefer to any other spot on earth. A few days ago three young men .called upon me with a view of getting information as to their prospects, if any, of getting land under the " Purchase and Settlement Company." Here were fine young men, able and willing t* work, ready to sink their labour as capital in Irish soil, preparing to emigrate, but eagerly clinging tothe.old sod if they could only get a footing. And one of the three seemed remarkably intelligent and expressed himself with a readiness and felicity of language that would do credit to one of our modern tribunes. What a pity, thought I, not to be able to find room at home for young men so promising ! Assuredly this unhappy country can ill afford to part with that class of Irishmen, whose labour and intelligence are a mine of wealth. And alas for the wisdom of a Government that cannot see the folly of banishing the bone and sinew of a country 1 I 1 am every day more fully convinced of the wisdom and justice of this scheme of " purchase and settlement " as a State-aided project. This poor country needs, amongst many other remedies, that of genuine hearty sympathy from the British Government— some real proof of sympathy with the wants and feelings of our people. The world knows that the Irish are a patient and a forgiving people. They have suffered incalculable injuries from British misrule, and countless indignities from British scorn, but yet the Irish race would easily forgive the past, and generously wipe out old scores, if they only had evidence of genuine heartiness and sympathy on the part of their rulers. How much wiser and better that the State should settle the young men. of Ireland in their own native land, than help to send them adrift with the bitter feeling of enforced exile ! Better, is it not, to make them/contented and loyal at home, than send them abroad to swell the ranks of the inveterate enemies of British rule in Ireland ? In a few days hundreds of our small farmers and labourers shall be hurrying away to England to supplement their scanty and insufficient earnings on the small patch of land at home. Already, indeed, the annual exodus has commenced. Would that they needed not the English labour market ! Their simple, innocent habits of home life are gravely endangered by the moral depravity and degradation of that stratum of society in which they are obliged to mix during that labour visit of two or three months of the year. But how sad is the condition in the social scale of a country that stands in need of that annual artificial migration of her labourers into a foreign field ! Alas, such is the state of Ireland in the last quarter of the nineteenth century I I looi to the operations of your company to remedy this and other evils that press heavily upon our poor misgoverned country. — Believe me, my dear Professor Baldwin, yours very faithfully, f f. J. MacCormack. T. Baldwin, Esq., Managing Director " Land Purchase," *c. "An Irishman named Power, who accompanied O'Donovan on the Soudan expedition, but had luckily to remain behind from illness at Khartoum, is correspondent of the Times, and is telegraphing whenever he can that Gordon- expects English troops and can't do without them." — London Correspondence of N. T. Sun. It is interesting to tell that this Irishman and solitary newspaper correspondent with beleaguered Gordon in Khartoum is one Frank Power, youngest son of the late manager of the National Bank in Dublin. Though almost a boy in years, Power, having been educated partly in Belgium and partly in Austria, and having gone through a portion of the late Servian and Russo-Turkish campaigns in the double capacity of journalist and semi-military attache to the Austrian officers, has seen a good deal of the world by this time. To considerable literary brillancy Power adds a bold originality in his treatment of narrativs, and his astonishing accornts of his adventures on his return from Servia and Turkey earned for him among his colleagues on the Dublin Freeman's Journal the title of " Ghazi the Magnificent." The appearance of " the Ghazi " now in the character of the inevitable Irishman who turns up at the most unexpected end of the earth in the crisis of the hour will be a source of endless glory to him when he gets back to his native sod. Is this appearanct of Power, Edmund O'Donovan 's comrade that was supposed to have be slain with him, a good omen for the possible safety of O'Donovan himself 1 Jamet O'Kelly, M. P., has now got inside the Mahdi's camp and he went tbere mainly with a view of searching for O'Donovan. Nothing has been heard from O'Kelly since he passed the Arab lines. More unlikely things,have happened than that he should have found there the Bahadoor Khan,. of the Merv Oaßis, established as the Mahdi's Vivier-in-Ohief. How many Irish hearts would rejoice, and from mixed causes, if that news were lashed around the globe I— Pilot,