However it may be decided, it would seem
that for the first time, as far as we are acquainted with the fortunes
of this interesting race, they have found themselves in a really
prosperous condition, in this country. Driven from the soil in the west
of Europe, to which their forefathers clang for two thousand years, they
have at length, and for the first time in their entire history, found
a real home in a land of strangers. Having been told, in the frightful
language of political economy, that at the daily table which Nature
spreads for the human family there is no cover laid for them in Ireland,
they have crossed the ocean to find occupation, shelter, and bread, on a
foreign but friendly soil.
This "Celtic Exodus," as it has been aptly called, is to all the parties
immediately connected with it one of the most important events of the
day. To the emigrants themselves it may be regarded as a passing from
death to life. It will benefit Ireland by reducing a surplus population,
and restoring a sounder and juster relation of capital and labor. It
will benefit the laboring classes in England, where wages have been kept
down to the starvation-point by the struggle between native population
and the inhabitants of the sister island, for that employment and food,
of which there is not enough for both.
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