Page:Celtic migrations (Heron, 1853).pdf/5

5 1846, the population of Ireland had been rapidly increasing from the earliest known time, with the exception of the interval succeeding the disastrous civil wars of Charles I. and of James II., when the confiscations of property and the penal laws drove thousands of the native gentry, with their tenants, to serve in the armies of France, Spain, and Germany:—

Thus, the population Ireland, returned by the census of 1841 as 8,175,124, was found by the census of 1851 to have diminished to 6,515,794—an amount less by 286,033 than its numbers 30 years before, in 1821.

This great diminition of the population of Ireland has arisen from the failure of the potato and the repeal of the Corn-laws. The failure of the potato crop caused the famine of 1846 and 1847. The repeal of the Corn-laws has rendered the price of grain crops less at home, and increased the price of grain crops in the fertile virgin soils of North America. Hence, a direct inducement was given to emigration. And the labourers of the agricultural counties of England and Ireland, no longer having the monopoly of the great English market, will naturally, in the absence of other disturbing causes, proceed to the places where their labour may obtain a greater reward than it can obtain at home.

The immediate agencies by which the population has been so lessened in numbers are, the diminution of marriages and the retardation of births, occasioned by want and the dispersion of families; the acceleration of deaths, from the same causes; the emigration to England, and the emigration to foreign countries or the colonies.

We shall consider the emigration to England. The number of deck passengers that arrived in Liverpool from Ireland, in 1847, was 296,231. From November 3, 1848, to October 12, 1851, the numbers were 756,674, of whom 531,469 were emigrants and jobbers, and the rest apparently paupers. These last, amounting to 225,205, must have spread over England; and, estimating the numbers going to other ports, I cannot think that the permanent emigration from Ireland to England has been less, during the last four years, than 400,000.