The more respectable classes are leaving the country, because they prefer living in a free land, where they can feel sure that their hard earnings will be their own, and not their landlord's, and where they are not subject to the miserable political and religious tyranny which reigns supreme in Ireland.

In the evidence given before the Land Tenure Committee of 1864, we find the following statements made by Dr.Keane, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Cloyne.

His Lordship is a man of more than ordinary intelligence, and of more than ordinary patriotism.

He has made the subject of emigration his special study, partly from a deep devotion to all that concerns the welfare of his country, and partly from the circumstance of his residence being at Queenstown, the port from which Irishmen leave their native shores, and the place where wails of the emigrants continually resound.

I subjoin a few of his replies to the questions proposed:-- "I attribute emigration principally to the want of employment." "A man who has only ten or twelve acres, and who is a tenant-at-will, finding that the land requires improvement, is afraid to waste it [his money], and he goes away.