William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 2

[358] actual figures of the list. When war broke out, high bounties and good rations tempted many a poor fellow to come out; and while the Republic kept on spending a million of dollars every day on men and powder, swarms of the more jovial and reckless Irish flocked into New York. Yet, even under war excitement, the old number of arrivals at New York was never reached. The springs from which the increase came were drying up.

Nothing was then done, and nothing is now done, by English law, to check this movement of our people towards America. A right to emigrate is treated by our magistrates as one of the indefeasible rights of man. Science and policy have combined to favour emigration from our shores. Steam has made the passage cheap and swift. A better class of vessels and a closer system of inspection have reduced the perils of a voyage across the Atlantic to a bagatelle. Societies help the poor to get away. The last legal restraint on the free movement of English-born persons — the old law of nationality (once a Briton, always a Briton)--is abolished; so that Saxon and Celt may now become American citizens, and side with their adopted country against