EMIGRATION OR NO EMIGRATION.
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND.
![[ Dining Room of the Immigrant Sheds in Quebec, 1873, Unknown, D.B. Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario Archives AP5.C13 ]](../../images/site/52591_2.jpg "[ Dining Room of the Immigrant Sheds in Quebec, 1873, Unknown, D.B. Weldon Library, University of Western Ontario Archives AP5.C13 ]")
MY COUNTRYMEN ‐ Do not forsake your native land. Nowhere shall you find a more genial clime or a more productive soil. Ireland is not overpeopled. Were Ireland only peopled as England is now peopled, there would be fifteen millions of souls. There is not an Irish bog or hillside which is not easier to reclaim than the American forests. Fat pigs and geese do not run about there wild; nor does roast beef or plum-pudding, as you have been virtually led to believe, hang from every bough. The emigration jobber is not your friend or the friend of Ireland. He is paid to say black is white, and white is black. Even when haply he tells the truth, he does not tell the whole truth. He would praise Ireland quite as much as he now praises America were he only paid to do so. Some succeed in America, but multitudes perish utterly. In any case, when the emigrant does succeed, he cannot do so without economy, temperance, industry and forethought ‐ qualities that ensure success here. How many leave father, mother, sister, brother, home, friend, country, without a color of excuse for doing so?
[...] There is no better or wholesomer place for honest men and healthy women than Ireland. The paid jobber says there is, and I, who am not paid, say there is not. Honesty and sobriety reward a man as well in Ireland as anywhere on the habitable earth. Those who tell you otherwise, whether as regards Canada or the States, are your enemies and the enemies of Ireland. Ireland is not overpeopled; she is underpeopled. She has room for all her sons. The Government of this country are willing, most willing, to do by you every right and proper thing, willing to give you absolute security of tenure, subject only to law; but you must ask for it with a loud cry, a long cry, and a cry altogether. Be only of one mind, and you cannot fail.
[...]Listen to no idle tales. Success can be achieved in Ireland by your own right hands, and with a certainty which you will not find in the alternately frost-bound and sun-parched plains whether of Canada or the States.
Henry MacCormack, M.D. Belfast.