REMARKS 0N EBIIGRATION 457

\Vhen an emigrant has fully prepared himself in other respects, the object of greatest importance to himself and his family, is the manner in which he is to cross the seas to America.

It has frequently been the fate of passengers, par- ticularly of those who have, at all periods of emigra- ' tion, embarked at ports in Ireland, and in the VVest— ern Highlands and Islands of Scotland, to have under- gone miseries of the most distressing and loathsome character.

Men of broken fortunes, or unprincipled adventu- rers, were generally the persons who have been en- gaged in the traflic long known by the emphatic cognomen of the “ White slave trade,” of transporting emigrants to America. They travelled over the country among the labouring classes, allured them by flattering, and commonly false accounts of the New World, to decide on emigrating, and to pay half of the passage money in advance. A ship of the worst class, ill found with materials, and most un- comfortably accommodated, was chartered to proceed to a certain port, Where the passengers embarked: crowded closely in the hold, the provisions and water indifferent, and often unwholesome and scanty, in- haling the foul air generated by filth and dirt, typhus fever was almost inevitably produced, and, as is too well known, many of the passengers usually became its Victims.

An act of Parliament at last subjected the emigrant ships to very proper restrictions as to the number of passengers, and to very necessary regulations as to