24 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



their prostration, get them up, and, if they can afford it, 

 change their garments, throwing the old ones, with the bed 

 and its accumulations, overboard. So, as any one may see, 

 from a dozen ships a day often in New York, they come 

 ashore with no disease but want of energy, but emaciated, 

 enfeebled, infected, and covered with vermin. When we 

 observe the listlessness, even cheerfulness, with which they 

 accept the precarious and dog-like subsistence which, while in 

 this condition, the already crowded city affords them, we 

 see the misery and degradation to which they must have 

 been habituated in their native land. When in a year after 

 wards we find that the same poor fellows are plainly growing 

 active, hopeful, enterprising, prudent, and, if they have been 

 favourably situated, cleanly, tidy, and actually changing to 

 their very bones as it seems tight, elastic, well-knit muscles 

 taking the place of flabby flesh, as ambition and blessed 

 discontent take the place of stupid indifference, - we appre 

 ciate, as the landlords and the government men of Ireland 

 never can, what are the causes of that degradation and 

 misery. 



Dr. M. gives much happier accounts of the English 

 governmental emigrant ships to Australia, in which he has 

 made two voyages. Some few of their arrangements are so 

 entirely commendable, and so obviously demanded by every 

 consideration of decency, humanity, and virtue, that I can 

 only wonder that the law does not require all emigrant 

 vessels to adopt them. Among these, that which is most 

 plainly required, is the division of the steerage into three 

 compartments : married parties with their children in the 

 central one, and unmarried men and women having separate 

 sleeping accommodations in the other two. 



The others of our midship passengers are mostly English 

 artisans, or manufacturing workmen. There are two or three 



