458 REMARKS ON EMIGRATION. the quantity and quality of water and provisions. This necessary and just law was complained of by those interested as grievous ; and " the white slave traders," who did not scruple to break through its stipulations, were often ingenious enough to evade its penalties. When the restrictions contained in this act were afterwards removed, no language can describe the consequent disease, misery, and squalid wretchedness imported, principally from Ireland, into the colonies. In 1827, the inhabitants of Halifax , in Nova Scotia , who, in the most humane and liberal manner, pro¬ vided for the relief of the sick emigrants, were doomed to share in the calamity thus introduced; and, while some hundreds of the passengers died in the hospitals, many of the healthy inhabitants of the town caught the infection, and were carried off by it.* During the summer of the same year, several ves¬ sels arrived at John's, Newfoundland , from Ire¬ land, on board of which men, women, and children, exceeding double the legal number, were crammed. Filth and confined air soon produced disease, and the effects were dreadful. One vessel, under ] 20 tons, had, previously to leaving Ireland with 110 passen¬ gers, loaded within three feet of the deck with salt. The weather during the passage was such, that, for * By an act of the legislature of Nova Scotia , masters of vessels are obliged to give bonds in the amount of L .10 for each passenger, that they will not become, for one year, chargeable to the parish, by reason of poverty, childhood, or age. The legislatures of all the other colonies have since passed similar acts.