Cont. 'Assisted Emigration from the Shirley Estate, 1843-54: by Patrick J. Duffy, published in 'The Clogher Record', Vol. XIV, No. 2. p. 7-63 The beginnings of a rudimentary social welfare system more in keeping with modem conditions, and a necessary response to the growing population of what at the time were called 'paupers', saw the controversial emergence of the Poor Law system in Ireland in 1838. By 1846 there were 130 workhouses operating in the country, including one in Carrickmacross. While the small farmers with valuations just above £4 came under enormous pressure as the rates for the maintenance of the workhouses rose, it was the estate owners who would have had to bear the brunt of the cost of supporting the penniless; and estates which had the misfortune to have a previous history of poor management invariably had the greatest populations of paupers. In a region like south Monaghan, many of the small farms valued at £4 and £5 were so impoverished by the rates of the later forties that they fell into serious arrears in rent, had to give up their farms and fall back on the poor law relief. In these circumstances, landlord interest in emigration and a reduction of pauper dependants and tenants of very small-holdings, steadily grew from the 1830s, and many of these impoverished small farmers were the recipients of Shirley's emigration allowances. Landowners therefore became increasingly keen on emigration as a way of reducing estate populations and of consolidating and improving farms which would allow a better response to the gradual shift in the agricultural economy from labour-intensive crops to cattle and pasture. Some of the classic and most controversial examples of landlord involvement in emigration were to be found on the larger and wealthier estates: the Wyndham estates in Clare, Palmerston's estate in Sligo, Monteagles in Limerick, the Fitzwilliam estate in south Wicklow and the Midleton property in Cork, all encouraged and subsidized portions of their poorer tenantry to leave for America. As Fitzpatrick notes, while none were forced to leave - though in limited instances eviction left many with little choice - and many were subsequently grateful for the opportunities afforded them, emigration, assisted by the landlords, was generally condemned as a conspiracy to exterminate the Irish race. One of the earliest officially-backed attempts at assisted emigration was Peter Robinson's scheme in 1825, where 567 emigrants from Munster were shipped to British America. Landlord-assisted migration was mostly favoured on the larger estates whose management was able to see the advantages of reducing the population, and had the capacity to engage in the complex process of moving whole families to America. Aside from the administrative difficulties in encouraging emigration from their estates, two other factors slowed down landlord action however. Firstly, the cost of moving people was an important consideration and secondly, public opinion, to which landlords became increasingly sensitive in pre-famine years, made them think twice: the other side to assisted emigration was often at worst eviction and at best the knocking-down of homesteads after the owners had emigrated (to prevent them returning) and the amalgamation of holdings. And Shirley was no stranger to the effect of these developments on public- opinion in the 1840s, when he was watched by a reporter of The Nation in Carrickrnacross, who condemned him in 1849 for 'practising extermination to an enormous extent'.(*5) In all, about 80,000 emigrants were directly assisted with passages overseas by 180 landlords; 30,000 of these were accounted for by ten major landowners who had the resources and the incentive to undertake a serious involvement. (*6) As Fitzpatrick points out, however, this was only a drop in the ocean in relation to the total emigration from Ireland in the nineteenth century. The figures for assisted migrants might be added to slightly by counting emigrants who were indirectly assisted by landlords foregoing arrears of rent to allow people to get the money together to emigrate, or supplementing the passage money or giving other forms of assistance for the journey apart from the actual passage money. In one of the quaint anecdotal stories from the memoirs of his experience as an agent on the Bath estate in Farney, William Steuart Trench gives Pattsy McDermott the option of 'paying up or emigrating'. Patsy replies, 'I have no money to pay for my passage, nor to buy a ha'porth for the journey; so I will give you my little place freely . . .'. Trench told him that he should have a free passage to any port in America, a respectable outfit and a sovereign in his hand on landing, to which Patsy responded, 'You may put me down for Boston'. (*7) Shirley responded to innumerable petitions for assistance to emigrate from his impoverished tenants; his agents' main strategy in the 1840s was ultimately to reduce the population on the property. Most of the emigrants from Ireland went out at their own expense, mainly with the help of remittances from family members already in America, and as the flow to America rose to a flood in the later forties, it acquired a momentum of its own which removed the need for much landlord involvement in post-famine years. But landlord-assisted emigration remains important in its local impact and Shirley's emigrants, for example, amounting to many hundreds (in conjunction with those from the Bath estate in the 1850s) must have had significant social and economic repercussions on the barony of Farney for one or two generations after the middle years of the nineteenth century. D Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration 1801-1921. Studies in Irish Economic and Social History, W. Steuart Trench 'Realities of irish Life', London 1868