forward part of the steamer, living scantily on the
limited allowance of bread, water, and
occasional saloon leavings! They manage,
nevertheless, to make a right merry voyage of it, after
the home-sickness and sea-sickness are somewhat
worn off, and a general acquaintance has
been scraped; and on many a night, at sea,
you and I, ensconced in the saloon, may hear
their merry laughter, their rollicking songs,
and the measure of their Irish jigs. And
when the last morning comes, ushered in by
cries of "Land!" "There's Long Island!''
''There's Staten Island!" "There are the
masts of the vessels anchored at New York!"
perhaps there is no one aboard the steamer
who strains eyes shoreward with such anxious
gaze as do these poor Irish emigrants, come
to a strange land and among a strange people
to seek the means of bare existence.

Of the Irish emigrants who thus land at the
American ports, a very large majority remain
where they first set foot on American soil.
It is characteristic that, while French, German,
Italian, and Scandinavian emigrants are
prone to scatter themselves, to penetrate to
the Western States, to become settlers on
the vast fertile lands which the American
Government parcels out and divides among those
who will take and till them, to find out new and
growing towns, and there establish themselves,
the Irish almost invariably confine themselves
to the vicinity, or the district of country
round about the place where they reach the
new continent. Thus it is that in nearly, if
not all, of the Eastern cities there is, in the
suburbs, a distinct Irish colony huddled
together, living in little shanties, or in big houses
which accommodate twenty or thirty families,
and which is usually nicknamed by the native
population "Dublin." According to the
census, a large preponderance of the foreign
population of the Atlantic cities is Irish; in
the Western cities they are exceeded by the
Dutch and Germans. Even the Frenchman,
belonging to that nation which, of all civilised
nations, travels least, is found in America to
take more kindly to the life of a backwoodsman
than the native of Erin, The Irishman
is essentially a social animal; he sticks close
to civilisation, hanging about its skirts; he
huddles with groups of his own race near to
populous cities and towns. The foreigner
who visits New York for the first time is
called upon to visit a certain notorious
district in that metropolis, known, the land over,
by the name of the "Five Points." It is
in the heart of the lower town, and its name is
derived from the junction of five narrow and
filthy streets, which meet in a kind of open
space in its centre. Here the Irish herd in
squalid masses, living in houses where several
families occupy a single room, issuing thence in
the daytime to earn, or to pilfer, the pittance
which is to keep them from starving for the
next twenty-four hours. Here one sees the
Irish in their state of lowest degradation.
Here they are, thieves, vagabonds, murderers,
garotters, burglars, here it is unsafe for the
well-dressed citizen to pass, even in broad
daylight, without an escort: so frightfully
desperate is the misery of its low Irish
denizens. Still, this "Five Points" district
is, in a manner, a political power. Universal
suffrage gives the people of the Fire Points
control over the elections. There exists a coterie
of wretched native American "roughs,"
bar-room-keepers, gamblers, prize-fighters, who,
by acts corrupt, yet shrewd, have managed to
get this Irish population under their leadership.
The result is seen in the election of
corrupt mayors, of more corrupt judges, and
of pugilists and gamblers to seats in the
national congress. Electoral corruption,
intimidation, and bribery, are here carried on
openly, unblushingly, and unmolested. It is
unsafe for any man to approach the polls in the
"Five Points" for the purpose of giving a vote
against the favourite candidate. The polls are
guarded by troops of ruffians; the population of
this quarter is a perpetual mob, ever ready for
action; even if the police were not kept away by
the corrupt authorities which the "Five Points"
have put into power, they would hardly dare
to engage with so formidable a mass of
desperate vagabonds. The riots which now and
then break out in the American metropolis
have their rise in the "Five Points," without
exception.

It may be here remarked that the criminal
statistics of New York, indeed those of all the
large Eastern cities, prove that a great majority
of the murders, thefts, and arsons
committed, are the work of the foreign population,
and especially of the Irish. The "Five Points"
and the "Dublins" of the Atlantic cities are
very pandemoniums of strife and quarrelling;
and it is hard to conceive a more abandoned
ruffian than the downright bad Irishman. The
same spirit which commits agrarian crime on the
soil of Erin, survives the Atlantic voyage, crops
out on the other side, and fills the American
courts and prisons with criminals of a most
desperate and incorrigible class. All the virtue
and patriotism in New York has hitherto been
unavailing to destroy the political power which
has its seat in the "Five Points."

But this is the darker side of the picture; it
is a necessary penalty for the hospitality which
America extends to the vagrants of all nations.
While, however, the lower, desperate, poverty-
stricken stratum of the Irish do certainly
constitute a great sore on the face of all the large
American cities, the better and more honest
class of Irish are a highly important element
in American society. The vast majority of
the Irish who emigrate to the Western
continent, not only succeed in getting a good
living, and comfortable situations, but they
give in return an ample equivalent in their
industry, and capacity for hard rough work.
Probably every railroad in America was built
by Irish hands; nearly all the heavy, disagreeable
drudgery to be performed in the country
is done by them. It is the Irish, and the Irish
alone, who clean the streets, dig the gutters,
build the roads, make the sewers; the farms