When the famine took place, the Irish fled as from a plague to America, and when they landed there both men and women were the prey of every blackguard without a single person to advise or protect them.

Had the Government taken the movement in hand and employed agents at New York to provide for them until they obtained employment, and to direct them where to apply for it, England would to-day probably have had a grateful nation on the other side of the Atlantic.  Instead, we have a hostile multitude which neglects no opportunity of voting for any politician hostile to Great Britain; and this disaffection sadly militates against that union of Anglo-Saxon hearts, which is so freely accepted by journalists and politicians as a sort of millennium.

Miss Cobbe related a story about a steady-going girl who had received money from her sister who was doing well in New York to pay her passage money out.

She told Miss Cobbe how she had been to an emigration office and booked her passage.

‘Direct to New York, of course.’

‘Well no, Miss.  But to some place close by, New something else.’

‘New something else near New York?’

’Yes; I disremember what it was, but he said it was quite handy for New York.’

‘Not New Orleans, surely?’

‘Yes, Miss, that was it, New Orleans, quite near New York,’ he said.

The scoundrelly agent had taken her passage money and sent her off absolutely friendless to New Orleans, where she died of a fever in less than a year.

Many of the three million emigrants after the famine must have been as easily duped.

A considerable time ago (but if I were in Kerry I could give the date from my diary, because I met the man at a dinner given at the St. James’s Club by Lord Kenmare’s son-in-law, Mr. Douglas) one of the big New World railway companies sent over an emissary to the British Government.

He was charged to offer to take every distressed man in Ireland, with his priest—­if he would go—­piper, cat, wife, sister, mother, and children, to the land through which the great railway ran.  Each man was to be given a log-house with three rooms, one hundred and sixty acres, ten of them under cultivation, and no residence was to be more than ten miles from a railway station.  All that was asked in return was a loan for ten years without interest to cover the expenses of transportation.

I rather think Mr. Chichester Fortescue was the Chief Secretary.  Anyhow, whoever occupied that post urged the Cabinet to accept the offer.  The conclave wavered, but Mr. Gladstone firmly vetoed the idea.  He was afraid the plan would be unpopular with the priests, who would see themselves bereft of the favourite members of their congregations.

Instead of this admirable scheme, we have ever since had the pitiable sight of the parents, the sisters, and the sweetheart crooning over the emigration of the best able-bodied young men from Ireland.