"
The memorial to Lord John Russell, praying that the Government would
give its sanction and support to Mr. Godley's scheme of colonization,
was signed by one archbishop, four marquises, seven earls, three
viscounts, thirteen barons, nine baronets, eighteen members of
parliament, some honourables, and several deputy-lieutenants. The
memorialists were, in all, eighty--that is, eighty of the leading peers,
members of parliament, and landowners approached the First Minister, to
beg that he would aid them in sending two millions of Irish Catholics to
Canada, to reclaim the land in that colony. Everybody knows that the
statement of Sir Robert Kane is accepted as a truth, that there are in
Ireland four and a-half millions of barren acres, the greater portion of
which would richly, and promptly, repay for their reclamation. Yet the
Government Bill for beginning that reclamation was withdrawn by the
Prime Minister, and no single voice was raised in favour of going on
with it; moreover, he said his reason for withdrawing it was, the
opposition which the House of Lords offered to it. Yes; they would have
no reclamation of Irish lands, but they would submit to bear increased
taxation in order to send the Celtic race by the million to delve in
Canada!--yet, even for that it became the Irish people to be duly
grateful, inasmuch as it was a decided improvement upon the older
colonization scheme of "To h----or Connaught.
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