Page:The Irish Emigrants Guide.djvu/20

. Change of location does not always bring better fortune to the emigrant. Numbers who might have lived happy and respected in their own country, find their condition and prospects sadly reversed in a strange land. These remarks are especially referable to persons who have been intended for the learned professions, accountants, and others of the middle or higher classes, who have received an education which at home might enable them to start in life with superior advantages. As we intended, however, in the course of these pages to allude in a special manner to the different classes of emigrants, their expectations and probabilities of success in the United States, we will only consider at present the condition of the poorer classes, or those immediately above them, who have the means of emigrating, and who might apply those means to the advancement of their temporal prospects.

Besides the impulsive character attributed to the Irishman, which prompts him to engage ardently in an undertaking, without stopping to count its probable risks and consequences, his buoyant and adventurous spirit is apt to support his hopes and designs under the bright coloring of his own warm imagination. He has been informed, perhaps, that beyond the Atlantic lies the Land of Liberty, the Model Republic, where all men are as nearly on an equality as the present diversified structure of society can well admit. He has been told that the stranger will there find a welcome, the exile a country, the houseless a home, the landless a farm, the laborer employment, the naked clothing, and the hungry food. He