Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/53

Rh Still more unreasonable is it to describe the "ruling classes" as standing alone in their opinion, an opinion, most unjustly ascribed to "their stupidity and selfishness," that emigration has been no calamity to Ireland.

In the first place, to call emigration a calamity, implies a confusion of ideas.

Emigration may be occasioned by a calamity: it maybe followed by disastrous consequences: but it is in itself a curative process: and to confound it with the evils to which it affords relief, would be as great a blunder as to mistake the distressing accidents of suppuration for symptoms of mortification. Plans for the express purpose of stimulating emigration have been devised and advocated from time to time by such men as Mr. Smith O'Brien, Sir Thomas Wyse, Mr. Sharman Crawford, Sir George C. Lewis, and Mr. Cobden; while, did