prey of every
blackguard without a single person to advise or protect them.

Had the Government taken the movement in hand and employed agents at New
York to provide for them until they obtained employment, and to direct
them where to apply for it, England would to-day probably have had a
grateful nation on the other side of the Atlantic. Instead, we have a
hostile multitude which neglects no opportunity of voting for any
politician hostile to Great Britain; and this disaffection sadly
militates against that union of Anglo-Saxon hearts, which is so freely
accepted by journalists and politicians as a sort of millennium.

Miss Cobbe related a story about a steady-going girl who had received
money from her sister who was doing well in New York to pay her passage
money out.

She told Miss Cobbe how she had been to an emigration office and booked
her passage.

'Direct to New York, of course.'

'Well no, Miss. But to some place close by, New something else.'

'New something else near New York?'

'Yes; I disremember what it was, but he said it was quite handy for New
York.'

'Not New Orleans, surely?'

'Yes, Miss, that was it, New Orleans, quite near New York,' he said.

The scoundrelly agent had taken her passage money and sent her off
absolutely friendless to New Orleans, where she died of a fever in less
than a year.

Many of the three million emigrants after the famine must have been as
easily duped.

A considerable time ago (but if I were in Kerry I could give the date
from my diary, because I met the man at a dinner given at the St.
James's Club by Lord Kenmare's son-in-law, Mr. Douglas) one of the big
New World railway companies sent over an emissary to the British
Government.

He was charged to offer to take every distressed man in Ireland, with
his priest--if he would go--piper, cat, wife, sister, mother, and
children, to the land through which the great railway ran. Each man was
to be given a log-house with three rooms, one hundred and sixty acres,
ten of them under cultivation, and no residence was to be more than ten
miles from a railway station. All that was asked in return was a loan
for ten years without interest to cover the expenses of transportation.

I rather think Mr. Chichester Fortescue was the Chief Secretary. Anyhow,
whoever occupied that post urged the Cabinet to accept the offer. The
conclave wavered, but Mr. Gladstone firmly vetoed the idea. He was
afraid the plan would be unpop