BUTLER, Governor to Secretary Folger, April 23, 1883

Governor Butler to Secretary Folger.

Dear Sir: I have the honor to call your attention to a matter of very considerable importance to this commonwealth, which is perhaps as succinctly stated as it may well be, in the inclosed extract from the Moniteur Beige of April 6, 1883, of which I send you also the translation. [See ante.]

One cargo of these emigrants has already arrived in Boston, and another is momentarily expected. If I were convinced that it was in the power of this commonwealth to prevent their landing, I should deem it my duty so to do. Many of them immediately become a charge upon the commonwealth for support. As to themselves and their families, I have the strongest and deepest sympathy with these poor people, and if landed, will endeavor to see that they are humanely and properly cared for.

I recognize, and rejoice in the theory upon which our Government was founded, that America should be a home for the oppressed and down-trodden everywhere. We welcome, therefore, all, however humble, who come to us of their own free will, aided by their energy, enterprise and resources. Such people, whether men, or women and their children, are a source of wealth to the country. But by this I by no means recognize the right of the Government of Great Britain to deport all its paupers to our shores, as if we were, though not a penal, yet a pauper colony of that Empire. By laws that trench very nearly on the penal, they have made these poor people of Ireland paupers, and then to get rid of feeding them, at governmental expense, send them to us, perhaps after they have selected the best of them to be sent to their own colonial dependencies. England ought not, in my judgment, to be permitted to empty her almshouses into the United States, nor ought she to be permitted in Ireland, where she has not almshouses to care for the people that her laws have made paupers, to impose them as a burden upon State charities.

May I ask of you, Mr. Secretary, therefore to take such means as to your good judgment may seem legal and proper to prevent the landing of such deportations at least within the limits of Massachusetts, and I promise you whatever aid in that regard the executive of the State may be able to give.

If it so happen that the laws of the United States may be ineffectual to hinder the landing of these forlorn creatures, certainly it is within the scope of the diplomatic power of the United States to make such representations to the Government of Great Britain as will prevent their being sent here against the will and wish of our Government. If the latter is the only way in which the evil can be reached, may I beg of you to present the matter to the President for his Consideration and intervention diplomatically if he shall see cause?

I have, &c.,