464 REMARKS ON ENIIGRATION.

grown up, are sent forward to prepare for the recep- tion of the families who are to follow afterwards. It often occurs that the young men thus sent to Ame- rica have, for two or three years, to earn money, which they remit to pay the passages of their friends.

Young Irishmen, also, who have at different times found their way to America, have not unfrequently, by working for three or four years in the towns, or among the settlements, or by employing themselves in the fisheries, accumulated considerable sums of money, which have been forwarded to Ireland, in order to bring after them their parents, brothers, or sisters, and often young women to whom they were previously affianced or attached. This I know to be a very common trait in the character of the Irish peasantry, and no circumstance can illustrate a more powerful force of afl'ectionate attachment.

The leading fault of Irish emigrants is their appa- rent indifference about fixing at once on the perma- nent and certain employment which the cultivation of the soil alone can secure to them. Transient la- bour among the old settlers seems more congenial to them than working on a wood farm on their own account. Exceptions, however, there are to this general observation; and in comparing the condition of the Irish settlers in America with that of the peasantry in Ireland, I may say, without the least fear of being incorrect, that I have beheld more appa- rent wretchedness, and, I would infer, real misery, in one day’s travelling in Ireland, than I have witnessed during several years’ residence in, and while travel-

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