" But this emigration, as well as that of 1825, both of
which were superintended by the Hon. Peter Robinson, was on a very
limited scale. The number taken out to Canada in the first emigration
was only 568 persons, men, women, and children. The Government supported
them for eighteen months after their landing, which very much increased
the expense; each of those emigrants having cost the country L22 before
they were finally settled. In 1825 Mr. Robinson took out 2,024 emigrants
under the same conditions, but in this instance the expense was slightly
diminished, the cost of each person being L21 10s. These emigrants also
prospered, but the money outlay in each case was so considerable, that
the experiment could not be extended, nor, in fact, repeated.[277]
From this period, committees continued to sit on the subject of
emigration, almost year after year; emigration from Ireland, even in the
absence of famine, being considered of the highest importance--and why?
Chiefly, because Irish labourers were lowering the rate of wages in the
English labour market--so it is stated in the report of the Select
Committee of 1826, in the following words:--"The question of emigration
from Ireland is decided by the population itself; and that which remains
for the legislature to decide is, whether it shall be turned to the
improvement of the British North American colonies, or whether it shall
be suffered and encouraged to take that which will be, and is, its
inevitable course, _to deluge Great Britain with poverty and
wretchedness_, and gradually, but certainly, to equalize the state of
the English and Irish peasantry.
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