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 PREFACE.

MORE than one motive influenced me in the desire to visit America, and record the results of my impressions in a published form.

I desired to ascertain by personal observation what the Irish—thousands of whom were constantly emigrating, as it were, from my very door—were doing in America; and that desire, to see with my own eyes, and judge with my own mind, was stimulated by the conflicting and contradictory accounts which reached home through various channels and sources of information, some friendly, more hostile.

I was desirous of understanding practically the true value of man's labour and industry, as applied to the cultivation of the soil and the development of a country. It has been so much the fashion of the day, either to palliate or excuse even the most grievous wrong done to the poor and the defenceless on the plea that in consequence of their 'want of capital' nothing could be hoped from them in their own country, and that emigration to another country was their only resource; or to despair of any material improvement in the condition and