Page:Irish In America.djvu/201

 CHAPTER X.

The Irish Exodus—Emigration, its Dangers by Sea and Land—Captain and Crew well matched—How Things were done Twenty Years since—The Emigration Commission and its Work—Landsharks and their Prey—Finding Canal Street—A Scotch Victim—The Sharks and Cormorants—Bogus Tickets—How the 'Outlaws' resisted Reform—The New System—The days of Bogus Tickets gone—A Word of Advice—Working of the System—Intelligence and Labour Department—Miss Nightingale's Opinion—Necessity for Constant Vigilance—The last Case one of the Worst.

THERE are few sadder episodes in the history of the world than the story of the Irish Exodus. Impelled, to a certain degree, by a spirit of adventure, but mainly driven from their native land by the operation of laws which, if not opposed to the genius of the people, were unsuited to the special circumstances of their country, millions of the Irish race have braved the dangers of an unknown element, and faced the perils of a new existence, in search of a home across the Atlantic. At times, this European life-stream flowed towards the New World in a broad and steady current; at others, it assumed the character of a resistless rush, breaking on the shores of America with so formidable a tide as to baffle every anticipation, and render the ordinary means of humane or sanitary precaution altogether inadequate and unavailing. Different indeed, in most of its features, is the emigration of to-day from that of thirty, or twenty, or even a dozen years since. A quarter of a century since, and much later still, the emigrant seemed marked out, as it were, as the legitimate object of plunder and oppression; and were not the frauds of which these helpless people were made the constant victims, matters, of public record, and against which legislatures at both sides of the ocean struggled, and