Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/63

Rh men appropriated to themselves what, of right, belonged to the city. They received, as before stated, from the ship-owners the sum of one dollar for each bonded passenger.

"These persons," says Comptroller John Ewen, in his report for 1845, "although worth the amount for which they may become liable for passengers in each particular case, afford but little indemnity to the Corporation for any considerable number of the bonded passengers, should they from any unforeseen calamity be thrown upon the city for support, several individuals being bondsmen for over $1,000,000 each. The aggregate of the bonds taken for the average number annually bonded during the last three years amounted to $16,149,600, and for the number bonded last year to $21,320,400. Some of those bonded are so disguised in the description rendered as scarcely to be identified six months after landing, and become inmates of the Almshouse, or are committed by the magistrates as vagrants, and in some shape maintained by the city. A bonded passenger, over fifty years of age, applied at the Mayor's Office some time since for relief, whose age was set down in the list of passengers at twenty years.

"The Mayor is authorized, by an ordinance of the Corporation, to receive not less than one nor more than ten dollars for each passenger as a commutation of such bonds; but, as this is entirely optional with the party, the greater number are bonded. The number of foreign passengers arriving annually at this port, within the last three years, has averaged 60,539; the number annually bonded within the same period, 53,832; and the number annually commuted in the same time, 6,707, or about one-ninth of the whole number.

"It would be more advantageous to the city to receive the sum of one dollar for each passenger, now paid to individuals, than to take the bonds. A large amount would then be annually received by the Corporation towards the support of foreign poor; and in case any of the passengers arriving at this port should, upon examination, prove to be paupers sent here from the parishes of Europe, they could, with the avails of this fund, be sent back to the places from whence they were brought; which would have a strong tendency to discourage a repetition of such practices.