EMIGRANT PESTILENCE IN NORTH AMERICA. WHEN Government were urged to
adopt some plan of systematic colonization for the relief of Ireland, they pointed, among other evasive excuses, to the" spontaneous emigration " which was sure to increase under the pressure of the scarcity, and Was estimated at about 300,000 for the present year. Probably it has already exceeded half that amount, and it has included numbers who ought not to have gone. Government were warned that, as a re- lief, the irregular and spontaneous emigration would not only be no substitute for systematic colonization, but that it must be disastrous; the usual helplessness of Irish emigrants, undirected, being fearfully aggravated by disease. So it has proved. We have often mentioned the complaints which come from the United States, of the pauperism and disease imported in the Irish emigrant ships; and this week we quote from the correspondence of the Morning Chronicle a very shocking account of the emi- grant quarantine station at Grosse Isle, below Quebec. Out of 57,000 emigrants shipped for Quebec, nearly 7,000 died ; of that number, more than 2,000 died on the voyage, more than 1,000 after arrival but before landing ; thus about one half died on board ship. The vessels enter the ports in the most horrible state of filth ; in some cases the officers of the ship have totally neglected to visit the emigrants and enforce the necessary order for purposes of decent cleanliness. The provisions have been bad. The quarantine regulations are so ineffective, that healthy resi- dents are suffered to visit the station, and the still infected emi- grants are permitted to wander into the colony. The principal faults in the system disclosed by these mortal facts are—the absence of any power to select proper objects for emigration and to reject others ; the absence of any due control and regulation on the voyage ; insufficiency of scrutiny into the pro- visions ; and inefficiency of the colonial quarantine. A system correct in other respects would need no "quarantine."
The statistics of the emigration to Australia exhibit very dif- ferent results. The emigrants mostly land in better health than when they embarked ; the mortality on board is far less than the average of the United Kingdom. This is fully accounted for when we remember that every emigrant is selected by a Govern- ment officer ; and every ship has its "surgeon superintendent," who is answerable not only for the medical care of the emigrants, but also for enforcing upon them due attention to cleanliness and decent order, and upon the owners sufficiency and wholesomeness of provisions.
The Canadian ships have no surgeons. They are chartered by private parties, and the conveyance of passengers is entirely a private affair. The Emigration-officers at the ports enforce the enactments of the Passengers Act so far as to regulate the num- ber of passengers according to tonnage, to see that the ships are seaworthy and properly fitted up, to compel the shipment of sufficient wholesome provisions. But as soon as a vessel leaves port, until it again enters port, it is beyond official control. There is no lack of a disposition to evade that control. Owners have shown a strong propensity to avoid supervision ; but the greatest difficulty lies in the propensities of the emigrants themselves—of the Irish especially-: accustomed to muddle on at home without any provision for decent cleanliness, they also carry on board ship a characteristic helplessness, with a perverse jealousy of interfe- rence. It is scarcely to be expected that the sailing-master, en- dowed with no effective authority, should persevere long in the odious task of attempting to enforce discipline among the herd ; or to be wondered at if, in despair and disgust, he sometimes leaves them altogetherto themselves. Several difficulties stand in the way of an enactment requir- ing every North American emigrant ship to carry a surgeon : but we do not think that any of the more obvious difficulties are conclusive. Unqualified pretenders to a knowledge of medicine would obtain places, no doubt, and might for a time escape detec- tion in short andzenerallysalnbrious voyages like those to North America ; but a proper system would check that abuse, as it has done in the case of the Southern emigrations. A great number of surgeons would be required : but many qualified surgeons would be glad of a respectable employment in the earlier years of their professional career. The increase of cost need not be very great. The ships vary in size, carrying from 60 to 500 passen- gers; a surgeon could make about three voyages in a season ; so that a charge of 6s. 8d. per head would yield a series of salaries ranging from 60/. to 500/. per annum. Now, a classified register might be kept of surgeons candidates for such employment; and every vessel might be obliged to carry a surgeon of a higher or lower class according to its size. A practice of regularly pro- moting the registered surgeons from the lower to the upper classes, according to conduct and seniority, and of allowing those who had been on the register to retain some honorary title, joined with the progressive rise of emolument, would most certainly afford ample inducements to attract very large numbers of pro- perly qualified surgeons into the employment. The service would come to be regarded as a standing resource of temporary employ- ment for young surgeons, and as a means of gaining both expe- rience and an official voucher of conduct and competency. Such a regulation would at once remove some of the worst evils arising from imperfect superintendence ; but it would only check evils—not converting the spontaneous emigration, with all its capriciousness and carelessness, into an effective relief like sys- tematic colonization. To make the emigration from Ireland thoroughly efficient as a relief, truly economical as regards the ratio between means and result, it should be taken entirely into the hands of Government. Without that, there can never be the most essential of all conditions, the true starting-point—the pro- per selection of emigrants. Immense numbers have gone this year, merely to perish, or to make indifferent colonists, without producing any proportionate relief to their native country. The same number, duly selected with regard to fitness, would produce a permanent relief, and give strength instead of weakness to the colony ; and we should not have had these revolting accounts of pauperism and pestilence invading the banks of the St. Lawrence.
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