ave gone on through the remainder of
the winter and spring, so that, everything considered, twenty-five per
cent. does not seem too high a rate at which to fix it for that year.
It is, however, to be taken into account, that the mortality amongst
Irish emigrants in 1847 was exceptionally great, so, in an average for
the six years from 1846 to 1851 we must strike below it. Seventeen per
cent does not seem too high an average for those six years.

We have not such full information about those who emigrated to the
United States as we have of those who went to Canada; the Canadian
emigrants had certainly some advantages on their side; for, until the
year 1847 there was no protection for emigrants who landed at New York.
In that year the Legislature of the State of New York passed a law,
establishing a permanent Commission for the relief and protection of
emigrants, which, in due time, when it got into working order, did a
world of good. Previous to this, private hospitals were established by
the shipbrokers (the creatures of the shipowners), in the neighbourhood
of New York. A Committee appointed by the Aldermen of New York in 1846
visited one of those institutions, and thus reported upon it: "The
Committee discovered in one apartment, 50 feet square, 100 sick and
dying emigrants lying on straw; and among them, in their midst, the
bodies of two who had died four or five days before, but who had been
left for that time without burial! They found in the course of their
inquiry that decayed vegetables, bad flour, and putrid meat, were
specially purchased and provided for the use of the strangers! Such as
had strength to escape from these slaughter-houses fled from them as
from a plague, and roamed through the city, exciting the
compassion--perhaps the horror--of the passers by. Those who were too
ill to escape had to take their chance--such chance as poisonous food,
infected air, and bad treatment afforded them of ultimate
recovery."[293]

It may be fairly assumed that the mortality amongst the emigrants who
went to the United States was at least as great as amongst those who
went to British America. The emigration from Ireland for the above six
years was, as already stated, 1,180,409, seventeen per cent. of whom
will give us 200,668, which, being added to 1,039,552, the calculated
number of deaths at home, we have ONE MILLION, TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY
THOUSAND DEATHS resulting directly from the Irish Famine, and the
pestilence