Forgetting any moral point of view it doesn't ring true commercially as well. I can't imagine a ship's captain preferring 60 emigrants to a 3 ton block of granite. Granite blocks don't need any maintenance on the journey and tend to stay were they are put and never mutiny.

The commercial situation changes if the cargo is paying for the trip. Emigrants have always been taken advantage of, although the income for the legal Ireland-USA emigration pale into insignificance compared to the boat people of Vietnam/China and Africa. The mass transport by road from Asia/Eastern Europe to Western Europe. Or indeed Mexico - USA, Cuba - USA. All these routes are more lucrative because they are illegal as well. Everything that we like to think of as happening 100's of years ago happens today and every day.

Similarly, the slave trade didn't die out 200 years ago, it is still with us with 10,000s of girls shipped from Eastern Europe to the West and imprisoned in brothels. Somehow we let this happen right in our towns and cities without caring much about it at all. Just one example of a trade which today is much bigger than the Africa - Americas trade ever was.

Many people who end up in slavery of one sort or another set off a emigrants, this must have been common with the Irish emigrants as well - once you are on the boat you are under someone's control.

There is no end to man's ability to do harm to man and no limit to man's ability to do good to man. There are plenty of examples of people capable of both at almost the same time. I can't understand how humanists who believe the man will intrinsically do good to man can justify this given the evidence.