The following discusses something of emigration from all of Ireland, before the dates mentioned - the paper it is taken from deals only with the Shirley estate in Co. Monaghan. 'Assisted Emigration from the Shirley Estate, 1843-54: by Patrick J. Duffy, published in 'The Clogher Record', Vol. XIV, No. 2. p. 7-63 INTRODUCTION Much, but not enough, has been written about assisted emigration from nineteenth century Ireland - that is, emigration which was largely paid for by government or private individuals or institutions, but chiefly by landlords. The ideological implications of emigration have been the same for the nineteenth century and today: it is what might be described as a political and social 'hot potato'. Encouraging people to leave Ireland is a very risky undertaking. Even at the height of the massive outmovement in the 1840s, the official agencies of public opinion were at least ambivalent, and at most opposed to emigration and this attitude continued throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. The editorial policy of the Freeman's Journal, for example, disapproved of the flow of people out of the homeland, but at the same time the paper carried many advertisements for shipping lines to America as well as articles of advice to potential emigrants. The Catholic Church was opposed to the emigration, as evidenced in the pronouncements of some of the hierarchy, but at the same time many individual clergy on the ground in destitute rural parishes encouraged members of their flock to leave. Fr Patrick Moynagh from the parish of Donagh in north Monaghan, for example, helped many people to emigrate to Canada in the 1830s and 40s. As the nineteenth century progressed and as emigration to North America proceeded, information and knowledge of emigrant destinations and opportunities increased. Certainly by the mid-nineteenth century, America beckoned more and more brightly to all from cottier to cabinet minister with its promise of a solution to the increasing 'impoverishment of the Irish countryside. The Devon Commission (in 1845) was frequently preoccupied with the disposition of the Irish to emigrate - often commenting on the reluctance of Catholics to leave home and the readiness of Protestants to go, a reflection no doubt of earlier and more established emigration traditions and contacts among Ulster's Protestant population. But the willingness of the Irish generally to emigrate became a feature of comment more and more frequently in pre-famine years, and this change in attitude was significantly related to the growing volume of outmigration and the increasing intensity of the information feedback to Ireland. By the 1820s, official government attitudes to emigration from Ireland had come full circle from the early eighteenth century, when emigration was frowned upon as a loss to the home economy. In the 1730s and again in the 1780s, emigration was prohibited or severely restricted. In 1783, for example, the Irish Parliament outlawed the emigration of certain artisan classes. Landowners were universally opposed to emigration which depleted their tenantry and often took away their best tenants. In the early 1700s, a great many families, mostly Protestant tenants, had left the Clones area much to the annoyance of estate agents. The post-war crisis after 1815 permanently changed the attitude of the political establishment to emigration, especially emigration to British north America. In keeping with changed perspectives on the population explosion spreading throughout industrialising Europe following the writings of Thomas Malthus, emigration of the poor was especially seen as an economic and social safety valve. In Victorian England it was viewed as a 'method of procuring social order at a minimum of cost' Part of the reason for official encouragement of emigration was the increasing pressure on the English economy by escalating numbers of impoverished labourer and Emigration from the Shirley Estate 1843-54. pauper immigrants from Ireland. Many of these, added to native paupers, were a growing burden on the Poor relief system in England. Liverpool was becoming a distinctively Irish city with large communities of Irish poor. South Ulster especially had a strong seasonal labour connection with the north of England and Wales which made people very familiar with these places. By the 1840s, the correspondence on the Farney emigrants shows many of them passing back and forth across to Liverpool by steamer from Dundalk and Newry with considerable ease. Some references: R J Dickson, Ulster Emigration to colonial America 1718-1785, Belfast, 1966, 186. See Clogher Record 1962, 201. D McLoughlin, Information flows and Irish emigration: the image of America in Ireland 1820-1870, unpublished MA thesis, Maynooth College, 1983, 78. Malthus in fact recommended state assistance to emigrants from Ireland in the 1820s. Following the establishment of the workhouses in Ireland, paupers were frequently assisted to emigrate by the Boards of Guardians: see P. Livingstone, 'Castleblayney Poor Law Union 1839-49' Clogher Record V (1964), 239-241.